Quote

Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.

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
Chase
Matter
Turns
Close
Tight
Never
Lasts
Laughing
Mask
Last
Stay
Hunger
Away
Seem
Hands
Hold
Fingers
Dream
Turn
Fast
Seems
Hand
Laugh
Come
Small
Poet

More quotes by 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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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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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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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
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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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Marriage, like money, is still with us and, like money, progressively devalued.
Robert Graves
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
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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I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate
Robert Graves
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For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
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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Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.
Robert Graves
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Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
Robert Graves
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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.
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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