Robert Graves Quotes

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

Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.

Well, we've been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.

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

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

Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.

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

Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him.

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.

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.

There is one story and one story only.

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either

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.

The conversation was like the sort one has in dreams—mad but interesting.

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money.

I am supposed to be an utter fool and the more I read the more of a fool they think me.

To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.

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

...but [I] had sworn on the very day of my demobilization never to be under anyone’s orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing.

But godhead is, after all, a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: if a man is generally worshipped as a god then he is a god. And if a god ceases to be worshipped he is nothing.

Because the world is in a sick condition and we are all somehow infected, against our will, even if we think we are whole in mind and soul and body.

Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.

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 human system of thought.

You don't want captains in the army who know too much or think too much.

I love, therefore I am.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written the world would end.

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

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

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