Robert Graves Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

Age Art Books Children Dreams Eyes Fighting

Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.

Robert Graves

Facts, Poet, Achieve

"The White Goddess".

10 Copy quote
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

Lovely, Constant, Various

"Pygmalion to Galatea" l. 26 (1927)

10 Copy quote
I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate

Robert Graves

Struggle, Fate, Use

Robert Graves, Richard Francis (2000). “I, Claudius ; and, Claudius the god”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

4 Copy quote
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

People, Poetry, Relation

4 Copy quote
There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Robert Graves

Horse, Reading, Writing

Robert Graves (2006). “The Long Weekend : a Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939: And, The Reader Over Your Shoulder : a Handbook for Writers of English Prose”, Carcanet Press

6 Copy quote
Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views.

Robert Graves

Strong, Philosophy, Party

Robert Graves, Patrick J. Quinn (2000). “Some speculations on literature, history, and religion”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

7 Copy quote
What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

Robert Graves

Intellectual, Finance, Humans

Robert Graves (1965). “Mammon and the black goddess”

12 Copy quote
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

Science, Medicine, May

9 Copy quote
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

Unexpected, Should, Found

7 Copy quote
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

Robert Graves

Philosophical, Destiny, Poet

9 Copy quote
There is one story and one story only.

Robert Graves

Stories, Crafts

Robert Graves, Frank L. Kersnowski (1989). “Conversations with Robert Graves”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

4 Copy quote
We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.

Robert Graves

War, Taken, Order

10 Copy quote
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.

Robert Graves

Dream, Facts, Poetic

Robert Graves, Frank L. Kersnowski (1989). “Conversations with Robert Graves”, p.105, Univ. Press of Mississippi

6 Copy quote
I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

Robert Graves

Horse, Rome, Lasts

13 Copy quote
In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.

Robert Graves

Love, Sports, Inspiration

Robert Graves (1936). “The Future of Swearing and Improper Language”

6 Copy quote
The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

Robert Graves

Art, Lying, Believe

Robert Graves (1960). “Food for Centaurs: Stories, Talks, Critical Studies, Poems”

4 Copy quote
Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.

Robert Graves

Poison, Mud

Robert Graves, Richard Francis (2000). “I, Claudius ; and, Claudius the god”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

4 Copy quote
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

Dream, Hurt, Pain

Robert Graves, Beryl Graves, Dunstan Ward (1999). “Complete poems”, Carcanet Pr

11 Copy quote
Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.

Robert Graves

Humorous, Poetry, Fancy

"The Crane Bag". Book by Robert Graves. "The Case for Xanthippe", 1969.

9 Copy quote
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

Girl, War, Night

"Goodbye to all that: and other great war writings".

12 Copy quote
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

Robert Graves

Tree, Murder, Pears

Robert Graves, Richard Francis (2000). “I, Claudius ; and, Claudius the god”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

8 Copy quote
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, Thinking, People

Robert Graves, Richard Francis (2000). “I, Claudius ; and, Claudius the god”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

11 Copy quote
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

War, Complaining, Survivor

16 Copy quote
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

Marriage, Men, Bills

Robert Graves (1965). “Mammon and the black goddess”

5 Copy quote
Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

Robert Graves

Religious, Home, Feelings

Robert Graves (1957). “Good-bye to all that”, Turtleback Books

17 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Siegfried Sassoon

Claudius

Isaac Rosenberg

Livia

Robert Graves

Follow

Born: July 24, 1895
Died: December 7, 1985
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics