Robert Graves quotes - page 3

I protested: "But all this is childish. Is there a war on here, or isn't there?" "The Royal Welch don't recognize it socially," he answered. (Robert Graves)
Hate and Fear are not wanted here, Nor Toys nor Country Lovers, Everything they took from my new poem book But the flyleaf and the covers. View quote
Robert Graves
The dead may speak the truth only, even when it discredits themselves. View quote
Robert Graves
If I were a young man And young was my Lily, A smart girl, a bold young man, Both of us silly. And though from time before I knew She'd stab me with pain, Though well I knew she'd not be true, I'd love her again. View quote
Robert Graves
With a fork drive Nature out, She will ever yet return; Hedge the flowerbed all about, Pull or stab or cut or burn, She will ever yet return. View quote
Robert Graves
War was return of earth to ugly earth, War was foundering of sublimities, Extinction of each happy art and faith By which the world had still kept head in air. View quote
Robert Graves
Water to water, ark again to ark, From woman back to woman: So each new victim treads unfalteringly The never altered circuit of his fate, Bringing twelve peers as witness Both to this starry rise and starry fall. View quote
Robert Graves
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup: Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. The log groans and confesses There is one story and one story only. View quote
Robert Graves
She in left hand bears a leafy quince; When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling, How may the King hold back? Royally then he barters life for love. View quote
Robert Graves
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. View quote
Robert Graves
By Jesus's time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: "It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns,” this is taken to mean: "It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill.”. (Robert Graves)
England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war madness that ran about everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language; and it was newspaper language. View quote
Robert Graves
His eyes are quickened so with grief, He can watch a grass or leaf Every instant grow; he can Clearly through a flint wall see, Or watch the startled spirit flee From the throat of a dead man. View quote
Robert Graves
Even nowadays an archaic sense of love-innocence recurs, however briefly, among most young men and women. Some few of these, who become poets, remain in love for the rest of their lives, watching the world with a detachment unknown to lawyers, politicians, financiers, and all other ministers of that blind and irresponsible successor to matriarchy and patriarchy - the mechanarchy. View quote
Robert Graves
Shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight, even though Nancy shared it with me; strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed... I could not use a telephone, I felt sick every time I travelled by train, and to see more than two new people in a single day prevented me from sleeping. View quote
Robert Graves
Immeasurable at every hour: He first taught lovers how to kiss, He brings down sunshine after shower, Thunder and hate are his also, He is YES and he is NO. View quote
Robert Graves
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair) Motive and end and moral in the air; Nice contradiction between fact and fact Will make the whole read human and exact. View quote
Robert Graves
What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags But an infection of the common sky That sagged ominously upon the earth. View quote
Robert Graves
Take courage, lover! Could you endure such pain At any hand but hers? View quote
Robert Graves
I got shot in the guts at the Beaumont-Hamel show. It hurt like hell, let me tell you. They took me down to the field-hospital. I was busy dying, but a company-sergeant major had got it in the head, and he was busy dying, too; and he did die. Well, as soon as ever the sergeant-major died, they took out that long gut... and they put it into me, grafted it on somehow. Wonderful chaps, these medicos! ... Well, this sergeant-major seems to have been an abstemious man. The lining of the new gut is much better than my old one; so I'm celebrating it. I only wish I'd borrowed his kidneys, too. View quote
Robert Graves
Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. 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)
Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand. View quote
Robert Graves
I am an old man With my bones very brittle, 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. View quote
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. He wakes the gale that tears your trees, He sings to you from window sills. View quote
Robert Graves
There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as learned bard or gifted child; To it all lines or lesser guards belong That startle with their shining Such common stories as they stray into. View quote
Robert Graves