I have done many impious things–no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.
ROBERT GRAVESWe forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
ROBERT GRAVES -
But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost’s poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!
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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 -
Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.
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Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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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.
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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.
ROBERT GRAVES