Robert Graves Quotes

79 quotes in 1342 categories

• In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
• The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
• To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
• 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…
• When the immense drugged universe explodes In a cascade of unendurable colour And leaves us gasping naked, This is no more than the ectasy of…
• As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
• 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…
• You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
• Love at first sight'some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely…
• The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.
• 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…
• Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not from the sun. No poet can hope to understand the nature…
• 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…
• 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…
• Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and…
• I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
• 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.
• Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.
• For words of rapture groping, they"Never such love," swore "ever before was!"
• Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

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