Quote

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

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
True
Delicate
Dream
Sudden
Thing
Prize
Clamorous
Much
Lovely
Stain
Careful
Clutch
Hurt
Flaw
Pain
Stains
Born
Flaws

More quotes by Robert Graves

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
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
Myths are seldom simple, and never irresponsible.
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
Love is universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns Are omens and nightmares - Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a searching look. Take courage, lover! Could you endure such pain At any hand but hers?
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
There's a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.
Robert Graves
Image
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
Robert Graves
Image
I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
Robert Graves
Image
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
Image
Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
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
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
Image
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
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
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
We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Robert Graves
Image
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves