Robert Graves Quotes

“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”

— Robert Graves

“There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.”

— Robert Graves

“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

“If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.”

— Robert Graves

“In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.”

— Robert Graves

“The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.”

— Robert Graves

“Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.”

— Robert Graves

Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.

— Robert Graves

“The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.”

— Robert Graves

“But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.”

— Robert Graves

That the crowd always likes a holiday is a common saying, but when the whole year becomes one long holiday, and nobody has time for attending to his business, and pleasure becomes compulsory, then it is a different matter.

— Robert Graves

“True poetry (inspired by the Muse and her prime symbol, the moon) even today is a survival, or intuitive re-creation, of the ancient Goddess-worship.”

— Robert Graves

“But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!”

— Robert Graves

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

— Robert Graves

Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses' Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser.

— Robert Graves

“Most men-it is my experience-are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.”

— Robert Graves

“Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.”

— 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

“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either. - Robert Graves”

— Robert Graves

To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central human system of thought.

— Robert Graves

You've read of sunsets rich as mine.

— Robert Graves

“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

Poets can't march in protest or do that sort of thing. I feel that's against the rules, and pointless. If mankind wants a great big final bang, that's what it'll get. One should never protest against anything unless it's going to have an effect. None of those marches do. One should either be silent or go straight to the top.

— Robert Graves

“The Persian Version
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaisance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and the Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined magnificently together.”

— Robert Graves

Those that can't beat the ass, beat the saddle.

— Robert Graves

“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet's blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King's evil; and Queen Anne when a child ...”

— Robert Graves

“I happened to notice that among the men who had willingly presented themselves for jury-service was one whom I knew to be the father of seven children. Under a law of Augustus's he was exempt for the rest of his life; yet he had not pleaded for exemption or mentioned the size of his family. I told the magistrate: "Strike this man's name off. He's a father of seven." He protested: "But, Cæsar, he has made no attempt to excuse himself." "Exactly," I said, "he wants to be a juryman. Strike him off." I meant, of course,that the fellow was concealing his immunity from what every honest man considered a very thankless and disagreeable duty and that he therefore was almost certain to have crooked intentions. Crooked jurymen could pick up a lot of money by bribes, for it was a commonplace that one interested juryman could sway the opinions of a whole bunch of uninterested ones; and the majority verdict decided a case.”

— Robert Graves

“I had chosen the fifteenth day of July, the day that Roman Knights go out crowned with olive wreaths to honor the Twins in a magnificent horseback procession:from the Temple of Mars they ride through the main streets of the City, circling back to the Temple of the Twins, where they offer sacrifices. The ceremony is a commemoration of the battle of Lake Regillus which was fought on that day over three hundred years ago. Castor and Pollux came riding in person to the help of a Roman army that was making a desperate stand on the lake-shore against a superior force of Latins; and ever since then they have been adopted as the particular patrons of the knights.”

— Robert Graves

“The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh and river. It is built broad, straight and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sight-seers to silence-though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position-”

— Robert Graves

You're all scum and you know it

— Robert Graves

“Some say that when the brothers met they were moved by true affection; that Esau forgave Jacob as they kissed and embraced; and that equal loving-kindness was shown between the many cousins, their children. Others, however, say that when Esau fell upon Jacob's neck, he tried to bite through his jugular vein, but the neck became hard as ivory, blunting Esau's teeth, which he therefore gnashed in futile rage.”

— Robert Graves

“What we now call 'finance' is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.”

— Robert Graves

“Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.”

— Robert Graves

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

— Robert Graves

“Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true ... Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?' ... The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.”

— Robert Graves

The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but "accessory" in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.

— Robert Graves

No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.

— Robert Graves

“No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.”

— Robert Graves

“There is one story and one story only.”

— Robert Graves

“New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.”

— Robert Graves

“Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.”

— Robert Graves

“Haunted Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street.”

— Robert Graves

“I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman.”

— Robert Graves

“One smile relieves a heart that grieves.”

— Robert Graves

“Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.”

— Robert Graves

“The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.”

— Robert Graves

“When I'm killed, don't think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there's one thing that I know well, I'm damned if I'll be damned to Hell!”

— Robert Graves

“Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart's desire ...”

— Robert Graves

“Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.”

— 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.

— Robert Graves