Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.
ROBERT GRAVESI 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.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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There’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.
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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 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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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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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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Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.
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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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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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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
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You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
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Well, we’ve been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.
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The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.
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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.
ROBERT GRAVES






