Robert Graves: Quotes about love

Robert Graves was English poet and novelist. Explore interesting quotes on love.

Robert Graves: 234 quotes0 likes

“Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent”

Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent;
Admire, you ladies, read, you boys,
My Country Sentiment.

"A First Review".

“I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.”

"The Boy out of Church".
Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.
I take my book, I take my stick
On the Sabbath day,
In woody nooks and valleys
I hide myself away.
To ponder there in quiet
God's Universal Plan,
Resolved that church and Sabbath
Were never made for man.

“I am YES and I am NO,
Black as pitch and white as snow,
Love me, hate me, reconcile
Hate with love, perfect with vile,
So equal justice shall be done
And life shared between moon and sun.”

"The God Called Poetry".
Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: Then speaking from his double head
The glorious fearful monster said
"I am YES and I am NO,
Black as pitch and white as snow,
Love me, hate me, reconcile
Hate with love, perfect with vile,
So equal justice shall be done
And life shared between moon and sun.
Nature for you shall curse or smile:
A poet you shall be, my son."

“Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.”

"Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961).
Poems

“Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.”

"Advice To Lovers"
Country Sentiment (1920)

“Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.”

"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources

“New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.”

"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“If I were a young man
And young was my Lily,
A smart girl, a bold young man,
Both of us silly.
And though from time before I knew
She'd stab me with pain,
Though well I knew she'd not be true,
I'd love her again.”

"Brittle Bones".
Country Sentiment (1920)

“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.”

"Advice To Lovers".
Country Sentiment (1920)

“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.”

"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.”

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

“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.”

"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.”

"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.”

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

“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.”

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?”

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

“Even nowadays an archaic sense of love-innocence recurs, however briefly, among most young men and women. Some few of these, who become poets, remain in love for the rest of their lives, watching the world with a detachment unknown to lawyers, politicians, financiers, and all other ministers of that blind and irresponsible successor to matriarchy and patriarchy — the mechanarchy.”

Introduction Poems about Love (1969).
General sources

“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.”

"A Pinch of Salt".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent;
Admire, you ladies, read, you boys,
My Country Sentiment.”

"A First Review"
Country Sentiment (1920)

“His wiles were witty and his fame far known,
Every king's daughter sought him for her own,
Yet he was nothing to be won or lost.
All lands to him were Ithaca: love-tossed
He loathed the fraud, yet would not bed alone.”

"Ulysses" from Poems 1930-1933 (1933)
Poems