Quotes by Robert Graves

“England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language. I fo...”

“The conversation was like the sort one has in dreamsmad but interesting.”

“When the immense drugged universe explodesIn a cascade of unendurable colourAnd leaves us gasping naked,This is no more than the ectasy of chaos:Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal loveWhich ...”

“Theres no money in poetry, but theres no poetry in money, either”

“To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.”

“There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money.”

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

“I am supposed to be an utter fool and the more I read the more of a fool they think me.”

“Fact is not truth, but a poet who willfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.”

“I was thinking, "So, Im Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.”

“...but [I] had sworn on the very day of my demobilization never to be under anyones orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing.”

“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...”

“Most menit is my experienceare 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 me...”

“I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many ...”

“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 no...”

“But godhead is, after all, a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: if a man is generally worshipped as a god then he is a god. And if a god ceases to be worshipped he is nothing.”

“Claudius, you're luckier than you realize. Guard your appointment jealously. Don't let anyone usurp it.""What do you mean, girl?""I mean that people don't kill their butts. They are cruel to them, ...”

“Because the world is in a sick condition and we are all somehow infected, against our will, even if we think we are whole in mind and soul and body.”

“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poets blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the h...”

“Love and honor. They are the two great things, and now theyre dimmed and blighted. Today, love is just sex and sentimentality. Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person...”