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 GRAVESPatriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
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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For words of rapture groping, they”Never such love,” swore “ever before was!”
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Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.
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New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
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Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
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When I’m killed, don’t think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there’s one thing that I know well, I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!
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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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Nine-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.
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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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A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
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Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.
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The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people’s wills.
ROBERT GRAVES