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As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

Robert Graves

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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
Murder
Uprooted
Cases
Pear
Tree
Sentenced
Pears
Charged
Custom
Customs
Burned

More quotes by Robert Graves

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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
Robert Graves
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Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.
Robert Graves
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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
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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
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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
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If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.
Robert Graves
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Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
Robert Graves
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Well, we've been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.
Robert Graves
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There is one story and one story only.
Robert Graves
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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
Robert Graves
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Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight
Robert Graves
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Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.
Robert Graves
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The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.
Robert Graves
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We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Robert Graves
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To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Robert Graves
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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
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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
Robert Graves
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Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.
Robert Graves
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The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
Robert Graves
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In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
Robert Graves