Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's poems—together with his translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths; his memoir of his early life, including his role in the First World War, Good-Bye to All That; and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess—have never been out of print...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 July 1895
CountryIreland
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Fact is not truth, but a poet who willfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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.
Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild I'd love to be a Fairy's child.
So when I'm killed, don't wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don't wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You'll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you've read.
The old lady told me that all the girls in the village of Annezin prayed every night for the War to end, and for the English to go away - as soon as their money was spent. And that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.
When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence. Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.