Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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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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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There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
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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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I revise the manuscript till I can’t read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it’s retyped again. Then there’s a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.
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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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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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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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Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.
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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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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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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
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Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him.
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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 gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.
ROBERT GRAVES