Robert Graves quotes - page 4

His wiles were witty and his fame far known, Every king's daughter sought him for her own, Yet he was nothing to be won or lost. All lands to him were Ithaca: love-tossed He loathed the fraud, yet would not bed alone. (Robert Graves)
To the much-tossed Ulysses, never done With woman whether gowned as wife or whore, Penelope and Circe seemed as one: She like a whore made his lewd fancies run, And wifely she a hero to him bore.
Robert Graves
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
The child alone a poet is: Spring and Fairyland are his. Truth and Reason show but dim, And all's poetry with him.
Robert Graves
Robin, and Red Riding Hood Take together to the wood, And Sir Galahad lies hid In a cave with Captain Kidd. None of all the magic hosts, None remain but a few ghosts Of timorous heart, to linger on Weeping for lost Babylon.
Robert Graves
Now I begin to know at last, These nights when I sit down to rhyme, The form and measure of that vast God we call Poetry, he who stoops And leaps me through his paper hoops A little higher every time.
Robert Graves
Anglican chaplains were remarkably out of touch with their troops. The Second Battalion chaplain, just before the Loos fighting, had preached a violent sermon on the Battle against Sin, at which one old soldier behind me had grumbled: "Christ, as if one bloody push wasn't enough to worry about at a time!"
Robert Graves
Nancy and I were married in January 1918 at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, she being just eighteen, and I twenty-two. George Mallory acted as the best man. Nancy had read the marriage-service for the first time that morning, and been so disgusted that she all but refused to go through with the wedding, though I had arranged for the ceremony to be modified and reduced to the shortest possible form. Another caricature scene to look back on: myself striding up the red carpet, wearing field-boots, spurs and sword; Nancy meeting me in a blue-check silk wedding-dress, utterly furious; packed benches on either side of the church, full of relatives; aunts using handkerchiefs; the choir boys out of tune; Nancy savagely muttering the responses, myself shouting them in a parade-ground voice.
Robert Graves
At the end of my first term's work, I attended the usual college board to give an account of myself. The spokesman coughed, and said a little stiffly: "I understand, Mr. Graves, that the essays which you write for your English tutor are, shall I say, a trifle temperamental. It appears, indeed, that you prefer some authors to others."
Robert Graves
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves
Postumus was clever: he guessed that this would make Cato angry enough to forget himself. And Cato rose to the bait, shouting out with a string of old-fashioned curses that in the days of his ancestor, whose memory this stammering imp was insulting, woe betide any child who failed in reverence to his elders; for they dealt out discipline with a heavy hand in those days. Whereas in these degenerate times the leading men of Rome gave any ignorant oafish lout (this was for Postumus) or any feeble-minded decrepit-limbed little whippersnapper (this was for me) full permission- Postumus interrupted with a warning smile: "So I was right. The degenerate Augustus insults the great Censor by employing you in his degenerate family. I suppose you have told the Lady Livia just how you feel about things?" (Robert Graves)
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.
Robert Graves
His wiles were witty and his fame far known, Every king's daughter sought him for her own, Yet he was nothing to be won or lost.
Robert Graves
But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door.
Robert Graves
Another War soon gets begun, A dirtier, a more glorious one; Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in; It's the cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think.
Robert Graves
James Burford, collier and fitter, was the oldest soldier of all. When I first spoke to him in the trenches, he said: "Excuse me, sir, will you explain what this here arrangement is on the side of my rifle?" "That's the safety catch. Didn't you do a musketry-course at the depôt?" "No, sir, I was a re-enlisted man, and I spent only a fortnight there. The old Lee-Metford didn't have no safety-catch." I asked him when he had last fired a rifle. "In Egypt in 1882," he said. "Weren't you in the South African War?"
Robert Graves
I am YES and I am NO, Black as pitch and white as snow, Love me, hate me, reconcile Hate with love, perfect with vile, So equal justice shall be done And life shared between moon and sun.
Robert Graves
Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill.
Robert Graves
The scenes were nearly always recollections of my first four months in France; the emotion-recording apparatus seems to have failed after Loos.
Robert Graves
Down on his knees he sinks, the stiff-necked King, Stoops and kneels and grovels, chin to the mud.
Robert Graves
Violent disorders call for violent remedies. Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log. I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool. Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out. (Robert Graves)
Opposite our trenches a German salient protruded, and the brigadier wanted to "bite it off" in proof of the division's offensive spirit. Trench soldiers could never understand the Staff's desire to bite off an enemy salient. It was hardly desirable to be fired at from both flanks.
Robert Graves
Children, if you dare to think Of the greatness, rareness, muchness, Fewness of this precious only Endless world in which you say You live, you think of things like this.
Robert Graves
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage.
Robert Graves
The chief trouble with the official style is that it spreads far beyond the formal contexts to which it is suited. Most civil servants, having learned to write in this way, cannot throw off the habit.
Robert Graves