Robert Graves Quotes (51 Quotes)

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

Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?

When the days of rejoicing are over, When the flags are stowed safely away, They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'And another wild Armistice day.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties perception, invention, improvisation.

The charms are vain, one wish is enough.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.

How is your trade, Aquarius, This frosty night' Complaints is many and various And my feet are cold,' says Aquarius.

They carry Time looped so river-wise about their house There's no way in by history's road To name or number them.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

I have but to wish, and that is enough.

No escape, No such thing to dream of new dimensions, Cheating checkmate by painting the king's robe So that he slides like a queen.

One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.

Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.

Royally then he barters life for love.

He kissed her again, and said:
'Is magic of love less powerful at your Court
Than at this green well-head?

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

Across two counties he can hear And catch your words before you speak. The woodlouse or the maggot's weak Clamour rings in his sad ear, And noise so slight it would surpass Credence.

Ever in vain will courage plot
The dragon's death, in coat of proof;
Or love abjure the mermaid grot;
Or faith denounce the cloven hoof.

I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.

Any honest housewife would sort them out, Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men

The thundering text, the snivelling commentary.

To bring the dead to life; Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead; Blow on a dead man's embers; And a live flame will start.

Bullfight critics row on row crowd the enormous plaza de toros, but only one is there who knows, and he's the one who fights the bull.

This would try the temper of any saint.

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

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.

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

My faith, it grows faint!

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and if he is lucky enough know the love of an honest woman.

In my childhood rumors ran
Of a world beyond our door-
Terrors to the life of man
That the highroad held in store.

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.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall

Two souls, now unalterably one
In whole love always and for ever,
Soar out of twilight, through upper air,
Let fall their sensous burden.

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

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

Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.

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.

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell uponThe trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.

As for the Freudian, it is a very low, Central European sort of humour.

One smile relieves a heart that grievesthough deadly sad it be,and one hard look Can close the book that lovers love to see.

War was return of earth to ugly earth, War was foundering of sublimities, Extinction of each happy art and faith By which the world had still kept head in air, Protesting logic or protesting love, Until the unendurable moment struck - The inward scre

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 . . .

You reading over my shoulder, peering beneath My writing arm.

All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.