black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.

Robert Graves

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.
ROBERT GRAVES

Bold Gentleman Hard Work Leader Men Passionate Return Saint Success Trust Year
Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay; But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
ROBERT GRAVES
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Destiny Impress Impressive Noble Philosophical Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Widely
The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
ROBERT GRAVES
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
ROBERT GRAVES

Famous Writer Mission One Liner Personal Rare Reveal Secret Writing
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 GRAVES

Blow Bow Champion Horse Last Reward Rome Salt Tide Wind Won
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

Beautiful Effect Impress Impressive Noble People Poet Poetry Relation Result Saying Simplicity Widely
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
ROBERT GRAVES

Burn Case Custom Murder
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.
ROBERT GRAVES

Aware Cutting Day Habitual Intuition Overcome Power Routine
Never use the word ‘audience.’ The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don’t have an ‘audience’. They’re talking to a single person all the time.
ROBERT GRAVES

Blow Bow Champion Hobby Idea Reading Reward Talk Tide Wind Won Writing
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.
ROBERT GRAVES

Born Care Delicate Dream Flaw Prize Sudden Yourself
The poet’s first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.
ROBERT GRAVES

Famous Writer Hobby Interest Mission Personal Rare Reveal Secret Writing Zeal
There is one story and one story only.
ROBERT GRAVES

Art And Culture Craft Dance History One Liner Ourselves Soul Story Together
Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
ROBERT GRAVES

Achieve Beautiful Effect Impress Impressive Noble Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Widely
Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.
ROBERT GRAVES
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 GRAVES

Emergency Mixture Narcotic Poetry Ring Universal

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Robert Graves Quotes