Robert Graves Quotes - Page 3

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Age Art Books Children Dreams Eyes Fighting

I do not love the Sabbath, The soapsuds and the starch, The troops of solemn people Who to Salvation march. I take my book, I take my stick On the Sabbath day, In woody nooks and valleys I hide myself away. To ponder there in quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved that church and Sabbath Were never made for man.

Robert Graves

Book, Men, People

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

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I revise the manuscript till I can't read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it's retyped again. Then there's a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.

Robert Graves

Eye, Finals, Should

Robert Graves, Frank L. Kersnowski (1989). “Conversations with Robert Graves”, p.102, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I'd store up no virtue For Heaven's distant plain, I'd live at ease as I did please And sin once again.

Robert Graves

Men, Arrows, Heaven

Robert Graves (1920). “Country Sentiment”

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Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.

Robert Graves

Dark, Space, Shining

Robert Graves (1997). “Complete Poems”

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Where nature with accustomed round Sweeps and garnishes the ground With kindly beauty, warm or cold Alternate seasons never old: Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill: All thought of peace behind you cast, Till like small boys with fear aghast, Each cries for God to understand, 'I could not help it, it was my hand.

Robert Graves

Boys, Blood, Hands

Robert Graves (1920). “Country Sentiment”

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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.

Robert Graves

Wind, Sea, Joy

'The Cool Web' (1927)

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To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age).

Robert Graves

War, Knowledge, Civilization

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She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.

Robert Graves

Flower, Fall, Sleep

Robert Graves (1986). “Selected poems”

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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

Running, Strong, Children

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

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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.

Robert Graves

Writing, Mean, Way

Robert Graves, Paul O'Prey (1995). “Collected writings on poetry”, Carcanet Pr

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Haunted Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street.

Robert Graves

Morning, Wine, Sunshine

Robert Graves (1920). “Country Sentiment”

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The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; Contrariwise, a diamond splits The prospect into idle bits That none can piece together.

Robert Graves

Eye, Sea, Sky

Robert Graves (1972). “Poems”, Penguin Books Ltd

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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

Philosophy, Drawing, Rabbits

Robert Graves, Lucia Graves (1995). “Complete short stories”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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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

Cutting, Fit, Trenches

Robert Graves (1980). “Good-Bye to All That: With a Prologue and an Epilogue”, Octagon Press, Limited

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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.

Robert Graves

Dog, Book, Cat

Robert Graves, Frank L. Kersnowski (1989). “Conversations with Robert Graves”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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

Art, Butterfly, White

Robert Graves, Frank L. Kersnowski (1989). “Conversations with Robert Graves”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.

Robert Graves

Christian, Jesus, Acceptance

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Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

Robert Graves

Humorous, Poetry, Fancy

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

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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

Writing, Ideas, Talking

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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

Religious, Experience, Exaltation

Robert Graves (2011). “The White Goddess”, p.53, Faber & Faber

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The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

Robert Graves

Mother, Song, Betrayal

Robert Graves (1955). “Collected poems, 1955”

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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

Independent, Civilization, Long

Robert Graves (2011). “The White Goddess”, p.361, Faber & Faber

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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

Years, Gentleman, Return

Robert Graves (1980). “Good-Bye to All That: With a Prologue and an Epilogue”, Octagon Press, Limited

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Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Robert Graves

Hands, Poetry, Trying

"Ten key things about... poetry" by Dorota Nosowicz, www.theguardian.com. October 1, 2000.

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Love is universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns; Are omens and nightmares - Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a searching look. Take courage, lover! Could you endure such pain At any hand but hers?

Robert Graves

Pain, Love Is, Hands

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

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

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