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 GRAVESFor 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.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
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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.
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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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.
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There is one story and one story only.
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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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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.
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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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You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
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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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The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
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Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.
ROBERT GRAVES