Robert Graves quotes - page 5

There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling. (Robert Graves)
Though I am a poor old man Worth very little, Yet I suck at my long pipe At peace in the sun, I do not fret nor much regret That my work is done.
Robert Graves
The frog-pool wanted a king. Jove sent them Old King Log.
Robert Graves
Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys Are here discreetly blent.
Robert Graves
I do not love the Sabbath, The soapsuds and the starch, The troops of solemn people Who to Salvation march.
Robert Graves
Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally.
Robert Graves
Having now been in the trenches for five months, I had passed my prime.
Robert Graves
Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray, And so decide who started This bloody war, and who's to pay, But he must be stout-hearted, Must sit and stake with quiet breath, Playing at cards with Death.
Robert Graves
Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.
Robert Graves
I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus ... this, that and the other.
Robert Graves
He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about. (Robert Graves)
Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly.
Robert Graves
He is older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun's hot wheel on these.
Robert Graves
He roars in his anger, he scratches, he looks not up.
Robert Graves
None of all the magic hosts, None remain but a few ghosts Of timorous heart, to linger on Weeping for lost Babylon.
Robert Graves
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners.
Robert Graves
Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one.
Robert Graves
The habit of obscurity is partly caused by a settled disinclination among public servants to give a definite refusal even where assent is out of the question; or to convey a vigorous rebuke even where, in private correspondence, any person with self-respect would feel bound to do so.
Robert Graves
Jehovah, it seems clear, was once regarded as a devoted son the the Great Goddess, who obeyed her in all things and by her favor swallowed up a number of variously named rival gods and godlings.
Robert Graves
Wisdom made him old and wary Banishing the Lords of Faery.
Robert Graves
Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay. (Robert Graves)
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.
Robert Graves
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
Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.
Robert Graves
Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
Robert Graves