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 GRAVESThere is one story and one story only.
More Robert Graves Quotes
-
-
Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.
ROBERT GRAVES -
I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.
ROBERT GRAVES -
Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can’t complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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
ROBERT GRAVES -
Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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.
ROBERT GRAVES -
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
ROBERT GRAVES -
If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.
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 -
You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
ROBERT GRAVES -
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
ROBERT GRAVES