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.
ROBERT GRAVESI was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
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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 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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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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Profession, Condition, Poet, Wide, Beautiful, Impressive, Poetry, Effect, Saying, Result, Impress
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Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart’s desire.
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So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You’ll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you’ve read.
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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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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You’ll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you’ve read.
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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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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.
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This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.
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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 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 GRAVES






