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 GRAVESThere is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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The poet’s first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.
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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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A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
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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.
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Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.
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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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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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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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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
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What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
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One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
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Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.
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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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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.
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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