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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

Beautiful Destiny Impress Impressive Noble Philosophical Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Widely
Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.
ROBERT GRAVES

Change Eye Flashback Happy Life Men Moment Movement Rain Summer Weather
So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You’ll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you’ve read.
ROBERT GRAVES

Heaven Hell Kill Walk
Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.
ROBERT GRAVES

Genuine Idea Inspiration Life Motivation Mud Obscure One Liner Poison Saying Shakespeare True
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
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits: This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid. Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.
ROBERT GRAVES

Animal Art Creativity Drawing End Formula Memory Rabbit
The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but “accessory” in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.
ROBERT GRAVES

Bow Champion Frustrate Long Order Reward Success Tear War Wind Won
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Condition Effect Impress Impressive Poet Poetry Profession Result Saying Wide
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
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

Approve Health Knowing Knowledge May Medicine Real Science Scientific True
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.
ROBERT GRAVES

Belief Cause Fighting Home Lost Loyalty Men Name Popular
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

Civilization Help Independent Poet Scholar Specialization Thinking
The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people’s wills.
ROBERT GRAVES

Character Culture Grow Hour Mature People Perfection Personality
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

Book Energy Innovation Mind People Positive Secrecy Solitude Soul Think Thinking
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 GRAVES

Crime Done Empire Empires Equality Great Kingdom Ruler Slave Story
The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.
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.

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The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.

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Popular Authors

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