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This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.

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

Culture Dream Fight Hate Light Machine Men Passion Root Vision
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!
ROBERT GRAVES

Accept Art Chance Confused Control Fate Good Luck Lucky Moon Sad Soul
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
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
ROBERT GRAVES

Famous Writer Mission One Liner Personal Rare Reveal Secret Writing
In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
ROBERT GRAVES

Being True Certitude Charm Inspiration Love Luck Motivation One Liner Sports True
Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
ROBERT GRAVES

Book Breed Cat Dog
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
ROBERT GRAVES

Civilian Cutting Fit Freedom Help Hope Inspire Patriotism Reject Story Trencher
New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beginnings Cut Garden Happiness Interest Knowledge Mature Men New Spring Strawberry Summer Wise
I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Effect Impress Impressive Noble People Poet Poetry Relation Result Saying Simplicity Widely
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.
ROBERT GRAVES

Aware Cutting Day Habitual Intuition Overcome Power Routine
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
As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.
ROBERT GRAVES

Love Mercy Myself Woman
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
Since the age of 15 poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.
ROBERT GRAVES

Age Encourage Great Greatness Interest Life Passion People Principle Proof Spiritual Support
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

Action Blow Bow Champion Discuss Girl Night Reward Tide War Wind Won
What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beginning Finance Hold Human Intellectual Love Myself Warm
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

Art Beautiful Butterfly Effect Impress Impressive Refuge Result Saying Stills Truth White Widely
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

Born Delicate Dreams Pain True Yourself
Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay; But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
ROBERT GRAVES
The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.
ROBERT GRAVES

Excitement Experience Function Herself Horror Poetry Presence Religious
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
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

Business Education Gentleman Heavily Return
Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.
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

Civilization Culture Follow Independent Long Obey Respect Said Tradition World
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

Culture Dream Fight Hate Light Machine Men Passion Root Vision
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
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
ROBERT GRAVES

Bill Easy Family Life Marriage Men Precious Time Together Trust World

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.

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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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