Robert Graves: Trending quotes

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“Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.”

Robert Graves

"Advice To Lovers".
Country Sentiment (1920)

“Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart's desire…”

Robert Graves

"I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flowerbed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
She will ever yet return.”

Robert Graves

"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all's poetry with him.”

Robert Graves

"Babylon"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.”

Robert Graves

"Recalling War," lines 31–34, from Collected Poems 1938 (1938).
Poems

“Postumus was clever: he guessed that this would make Cato angry enough to forget himself. And Cato rose to the bait, shouting out with a string of old-fashioned curses that in the days of his ancestor, whose memory this stammering imp was insulting, woe betide any child who failed in reverence to his elders; for they dealt out discipline with a heavy hand in those days. Whereas in these degenerate times the leading men of Rome gave any ignorant oafish lout (this was for Postumus) or any feeble-minded decrepit-limbed little whippersnapper (this was for me) full permission—
Postumus interrupted with a warning smile: "So I was right. The degenerate Augustus insults the great Censor by employing you in his degenerate family. I suppose you have told the Lady Livia just how you feel about things?"”

Robert Graves book I, Claudius

Source: I, Claudius (1934), Ch. 5.

“Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to this starry rise and starry fall.”

Robert Graves

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

“Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.”

Robert Graves

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

“She in left hand bears a leafy quince;
When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.”

Robert Graves

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

“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

"When I'm Killed".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.”

Robert Graves

The Paris Review, "Writers at Work: 4th series," interview with Peter Buckman and William Fifield (1969).
General sources

“Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.”

Robert Graves

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 17.

“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

"I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.”

Robert Graves

"The Persian Version," lines 1–2, from Poems 1938-1945: Satires and Grotesques (1946).
Poems

“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

"Pygmalion to Galatea" from Poems 1914-1926 (1927).
Poems

“The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem — that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday?"”

Robert Graves

"To An Ungentle Critic"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”

Robert Graves

Quoted in The Observer [London] (6 December 1964).
General sources

“I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and — if he is lucky enough — know the love of an honest woman.”

Robert Graves

Lecture at Oxford as quoted in Time (15 December 1961).
General sources

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?”

Robert Graves

"Down, Wanton, Down!," lines 1-4, from Poems 1930-1933 (1933).
Poems

“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

"Hate Not, Fear Not".
Country Sentiment (1920)