Quote

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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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
Honest
Idiocy
White
Butterfly
Art
Flight
Never
Flying
Straight
Master
Masters
Late
Cabbage

More quotes by Robert Graves

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Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
Robert Graves
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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So when I'm killed, don't wait for me, Walking the dim corridor In Heaven or Hell, don't wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You'll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you've read.
Robert Graves
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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
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Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.
Robert Graves
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As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.
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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What we now call finance is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
Robert Graves
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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
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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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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
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Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can't complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.
Robert Graves
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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
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Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
Robert Graves
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Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
Robert Graves
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There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
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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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
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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