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.
ROBERT GRAVESProfession, Condition, Poet, Wide, Beautiful, Impressive, Poetry, Effect, Saying, Result, Impress
More Robert Graves Quotes
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Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.
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Love at first sight’some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely at the surprised heart So that the cheek blanches then blushes.
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Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
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There is one story and one story only.
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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 well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.
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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
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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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There is one story and one story only.
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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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What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
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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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But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.
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You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
ROBERT GRAVES