EN
  • Deutsche Deutsche
  • English English
  • Français Français
  • Русский Русский

Robert Graves Quotes (displaying: 1 - 30 of 48 quotes)

Robert Graves Quotes
  Robert Graves quotes in other languages
Theme:
Dust in a cloud, blinding weather,Drums that rattle and roar!A mother and daughter stood togetherBeside their cottage door.'Mother, the heavens are bright like brass,The dust is shaken high,With labouring breath the soldiers pass,Their lips are cracked and dry.''Mother, I'll throw them apples down,I'll bring them pails of water.'The mother turned with an angry frownHolding back her daughter.'But mother, see, they faint with thirst,They march away to die,''Ah, sweet, had I but known at firstTheir throats are always dry.''There is no water can supply themIn western streams that flow,There is no fruit can satisfy themOn orchard trees that grow.''Once in my youth I gave, poor fool,A soldier apples and water,So may I die before you coolYour father's drouth, my daughter.
Robert Graves
Theme:
There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves
Theme:
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves
Theme:
A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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 of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucified to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red-eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrificial fires, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly forward, with a monotonous chant of "Kill! kill! kill!" and "Blood! blood! blood!
Robert Graves
You've read of sunsets rich as mine.
Robert Graves
Theme:
Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.
Robert Graves
Theme:
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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
Theme:
I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
Robert Graves
I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.
Robert Graves
The child alone a poet is: Spring and Fairyland are his.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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
Theme:
Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds.
Robert Graves
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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
Theme:
Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame That at the whisper of Love's name, Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise Your angry head and stand at gaze? Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach The ravelin and effect a breach-- Indifferent what you storm or why, So be that in the breach you die! Love may be blind, but Love at least Knows what is man and what mere beast; Or Beauty wayward, but requires More delicacy from her squires. Tell me, my witless, whose one boast Could be your staunchness at the post, When were you made a man of parts To think fine and profess the arts? Will many-gifted Beauty come Bowing to your bald rule of thumb, Or Love swear loyalty to your crown? Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!
Robert Graves
Theme:
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.” - Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Theme:
Wakeful they lie.
Robert Graves
Theme:
There's no money in poetry. Then again, there's no poetry in money either.
Robert Graves
Theme:
The White Goddess. All saints revile her, and all sober men. Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean -In scorn of which we sailed to find her. In distant regions likeliest to hold her. Whom we desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, To go our headstrong and heroic way. Seeking her out at the volcano's head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded. Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers: Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. 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
Theme:
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves
Theme:
To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.
Robert Graves
Theme:
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
Robert Graves
Theme:
But I am gifted, even in November. Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense. Of her nakedly worn magnificence. I forget cruelty and past betrayal, Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Robert Graves
Theme:
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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 fly. Singing about her head, as she rode by.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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 by hard fingers covered with rings.
Robert Graves
Theme:
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 chaos: Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal love. Which alone, as we know certainly, restores. Fragmentation into true being. Ecstasy of Chaos
Robert Graves
One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
Robert Graves