Robert Graves quotes - page 6

Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door. (Robert Graves)
Where nature with accustomed round Sweeps and garnishes the ground With kindly beauty, warm or cold - Alternate seasons never old: Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill: All thought of peace behind you cast, Till like small boys with fear aghast, Each cries for God to understand, 'I could not help it, it was my hand.'" View quote
Robert Graves
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out. View quote
Robert Graves
I do not love the Sabbath, The soapsuds and the starch, The troops of solemn people Who to Salvation march. I take my book, I take my stick On the Sabbath day, In woody nooks and valleys I hide myself away. To ponder there in quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved that church and Sabbath Were never made for man. View quote
Robert Graves
What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love. View quote
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: Blocks of slate enclosing dappled Red and green, enclosing tawny Yellow nets, enclosing white And black acres of dominoes, Where a neat brown paper parcel Tempts you to untie the string. View quote
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. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. View quote
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; if the Germans had got caught in a salient, our obvious duty was to keep them there as long as they could be persuaded to stay. We concluded that a passion for straight lines, for which headquarters were well known, had dictated this plan, which had no strategic or tactical excuse. View quote
Robert Graves
In the middle of a lecture I would have a sudden very clear experience of men on the march up the Béthune–La Bassée road; the men would be singing... These daydreams persisted like an alternate life and did not leave me until well in 1928. The scenes were nearly always recollections of my first four months in France; the emotion-recording apparatus seems to have failed after Loos. View quote
Robert Graves
I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus ... this, that and the other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the [[Idiot]', or ‘That Claudius', or ‘Claudius the Stammerer', or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius', or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius', am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the ‘golden predicament' from which I have never since become disentangled. View quote
Robert Graves
Caligula then reintroduced treason as a capital crime, ordered his speech to be at once engraved on a bronze tablet and posted on the wall of the House [where the Senate assembled for legislative and administrative work] above the seats of the Consuls, and rushed away. No more business was transacted that day; we were all too dejected. But the next day we lavished praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler and voted annual sacrifices to his Clemency. What else could we do? He had the army at his back, and power of life or death over us, and until someone was bold and clever enough to make a successful conspiracy against his life all that we could do was to humor him and hope for the best. (Robert Graves)
Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally. Schoolmasters seldom write well: it is difficult for any teacher to avoid either pomposity or, in the effort not to be pompous, a jocular conversational looseness. The clergy suffer from much the same occupational disability: they can seldom decide whether to use "the language of the market-place" or Biblical rhetoric. Men of letters usually feel impelled to cultivate an individual style - less because they feel sure of themselves as individuals than because they wish to carve a niche for themselves in literature; and nowadays an individual style usually means merely a peculiar range of inaccuracies, ambiguities, logical weaknesses and stylistic extravagancies. Trained journalists use a flat, over-simplified style, based on a study of what sells a paper and what does not, which is inadequate for most literary purposes. View quote
Robert Graves