Quote

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

Robert Graves

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Graves
Age: 90 †
Born: 1895
Born: July 24
Died: 1985
Died: December 7
Literary Critic
Military Personnel
Mythographer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Theatre Critic
Translator
Robert von Ranke-Graves
Robert Von Ranke-Graves
Robert Ranke Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves
Condition
Profession
Poet
Conditions
Rather

More quotes by Robert Graves

Image
Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.
Robert Graves
Image
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
Robert Graves
Image
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.
Robert Graves
Image
Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.
Robert Graves
Image
Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.
Robert Graves
Image
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.
Robert Graves
Image
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
Image
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
Robert Graves
Image
One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
Robert Graves
Image
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.
Robert Graves
Image
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.
Robert Graves
Image
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
Robert Graves
Image
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
Robert Graves
Image
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
Image
We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Robert Graves
Image
Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.
Robert Graves
Image
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
Image
I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
Robert Graves
Image
New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
Robert Graves
Image
What we now call finance is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
Robert Graves