Quote

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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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
Fighting
Killing
Hate
Sun
Must
Soon
Never
Kill
Men
Late
Scorch
Fight
Blight
Since
Wholesome
Dies
Grass

More quotes by 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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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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This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
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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There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
Robert Graves
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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
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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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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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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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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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There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves
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Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door.
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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To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Robert Graves
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A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.
Robert Graves
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A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.
Robert Graves
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Marriage, like money, is still with us and, like money, progressively devalued.
Robert Graves
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There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.
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