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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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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
Dead
Poets
Results
Twenties
Either
Nine
Hand
English
Literature
Result
Careerism
Keep
Poet
Tenths
Hands
Poetry
Vulgar
Trying
Late
Poetic

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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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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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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To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
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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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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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
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One smile relieves a heart that grieves.
Robert Graves
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One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern, but in different colors.
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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I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
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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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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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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Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
Robert Graves
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Marriage, like money, is still with us and, like money, progressively devalued.
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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She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.
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