Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.
ROBERT GRAVESFor words of rapture groping, they”Never such love,” swore “ever before was!”
More Robert Graves Quotes
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To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.
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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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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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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.
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Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.
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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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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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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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If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I’d store up no virtue For Heaven’s distant plain, I’d live at ease as I did please And sin once again.
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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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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 is one story and one story only.
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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.
ROBERT GRAVES






