I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
ROBERT GRAVESAny honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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There’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.
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To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
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New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
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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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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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But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost’s poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!
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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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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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The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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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About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman’s education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.
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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate.
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Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.
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Since the age of 15 poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.
ROBERT GRAVES