Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can’t complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.
ROBERT GRAVESThere’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
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Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.
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Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.
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In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
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Never use the word ‘audience.’ The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don’t have an ‘audience’. They’re talking to a single person all the time.
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Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave ‘s narrowness, though not its peace.
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There is one story and one story only.
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Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.
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You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
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For words of rapture groping, they”Never such love,” swore “ever before was!”
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Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.
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What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
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If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.
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If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
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Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.
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Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
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There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
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Well, we’ve been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.
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Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight
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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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Profession, Condition, Poet, Wide, Beautiful, Impressive, Poetry, Effect, Saying, Result, Impress
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Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay; But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
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When I’m killed, don’t think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there’s one thing that I know well, I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!
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The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
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He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits: This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid. Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.
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Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.
ROBERT GRAVES