No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.
ROBERT GRAVESNine-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.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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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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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
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Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.
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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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For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
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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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There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
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Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
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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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When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
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I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.
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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
ROBERT GRAVES






