I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.
ROBERT GRAVESYou mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
More Robert Graves Quotes
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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.
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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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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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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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The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but “accessory” in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.
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I have done many impious things–no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.
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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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As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
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To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
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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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There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
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Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.
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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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Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
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A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
ROBERT GRAVES