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.
ROBERT GRAVESTake your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave ‘s narrowness, though not its peace.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
Love at first sight’some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely at the surprised heart So that the cheek blanches then blushes.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
ROBERT GRAVES -
A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.
ROBERT GRAVES -
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
ROBERT GRAVES -
In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
ROBERT GRAVES