Robert Graves

The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to…

— Robert Graves

She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to…

— Robert Graves

“As quick as boiled asparagus!”

— Robert Graves

“Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock Never want for food or fire Always get their heart's desire…

— Robert Graves

To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience…

— Robert Graves

Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can't…

— Robert Graves

“To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about…

— Robert Graves

“The child alone a poet is: Spring and Fairyland are his.”

— Robert Graves

The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant…

— Robert Graves

Entrance and exit wounds aresilvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood.…

— Robert Graves

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

— Robert Graves

“Manticor in Arabia (The manticors of the montaines Mighte feed them on thy braines.--Skelton.) Thick and scented daisies spread Where with surface…

— Robert Graves

As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be…

— Robert Graves

Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a…

— Robert Graves

Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence. Though…

— Robert Graves

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of…

— Robert Graves

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language…

— Robert Graves

“Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The…

— Robert Graves

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

— Robert Graves

No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation…

— Robert Graves

The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional…

— Robert Graves

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or…

— Robert Graves

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

— Robert Graves

No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as…

— Robert Graves

“According to the Pelasgians, the goddess Athene was born besides Lake Tritonis in Libya, where she was found and nurtured by three…

— Robert Graves