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Robert Graves
102 quotes
“Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony...”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee; Hey and hither, my lad.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now I begin to know at last, These nights when I sit down to rhyme, The form and measure of that vast God we call Poetry, he who stoops And leaps me through his paper hoops A little higher every time.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun's hot wheel on these. He wakes the gale that tears your trees, He sings to you from window sills.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Riding on the shell and shot. He smites you down, he succours you, And where you seek him, he is not.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Immeasurable at every hour: He first taught lovers how to kiss, He brings down sunshine after shower, Thunder and hate are his also, He is YES and he is NO.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Down on his knees he sinks, the stiff-necked King, Stoops and kneels and grovels, chin to the mud. Out from his changed heart flutter on startled wing The fancy birds of his Pride, Honour, Kinglihood. He crawls, he grunts, he is beast-like, frogs and snails His diet, and grass, and water with hand for cup. He herds with brutes that have hooves and horns and tails, He roars in his anger, he scratches, he looks not up.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am an old man With my bones very brittle, Though I am a poor old man Worth very little, Yet I suck at my long pipe At peace in the sun, I do not fret nor much regret That my work is done.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I'd store up no virtue For Heaven's distant plain, I'd live at ease as I did please And sin once again.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And what of home — how goes it, boys, While we die here in stench and noise?”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where nature with accustomed round Sweeps and garnishes the ground With kindly beauty, warm or cold — Alternate seasons never old: Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill: All thought of peace behind you cast, Till like small boys with fear aghast, Each cries for God to understand, 'I could not help it, it was my hand.'”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys Are here discreetly blent; Admire, you ladies, read, you boys, My Country Sentiment.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hate and Fear are not wanted here, Nor Toys nor Country Lovers, Everything they took from my new poem book But the flyleaf and the covers.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I protested: "But all this is childish. Is there a war on here, or isn't there?" "The Royal Welch don't recognize it socially," he answered.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a daily exchange of courtesies between our machine guns and the Germans' at stand-to; by removing cartridges from the ammunition-belt one could rap out the rhythm of the familiar prostitutes' call: "MEET me DOWN in PICC-a-DILL-y", to which the Germans would reply, though in slower tempo, because our guns were faster than theirs: "YES, with-OUT my DRAWERS ON!”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anglican chaplains were remarkably out of touch with their troops. The Second Battalion chaplain, just before the Loos fighting, had preached a violent sermon on the Battle against Sin, at which one old soldier behind me had grumbled: "Christ, as if one bloody push wasn't enough to worry about at a time!”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war madness that ran about everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language; and it was newspaper language.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I got shot in the guts at the Beaumont-Hamel show. It hurt like hell, let me tell you. They took me down to the field-hospital. I was busy dying, but a company-sergeant major had got it in the head, and he was busy dying, too; and he did die. Well, as soon as ever the sergeant-major died, they took out that long gut... and they put it into me, grafted it on somehow. Wonderful chaps, these medicos! … Well, this sergeant-major seems to have been an abstemious man. The lining of the new gut is much better than my old one; so I'm celebrating it. I only wish I'd borrowed his kidneys, too.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Opposite our trenches a German salient protruded, and the brigadier wanted to "bite it off" in proof of the division's offensive spirit. Trench soldiers could never understand the Staff's desire to bite off an enemy salient. It was hardly desirable to be fired at from both flanks; if the Germans had got caught in a salient, our obvious duty was to keep them there as long as they could be persuaded to stay. We concluded that a passion for straight lines, for which headquarters were well known, had dictated this plan, which had no strategic or tactical excuse.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight, even though Nancy shared it with me; strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed... I could not use a telephone, I felt sick every time I travelled by train, and to see more than two new people in a single day prevented me from sleeping.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch.26 On being at home in Harlech in 1919. During the First World War, the mental effects of war on the fighting men were called shell shock or neurasthenia — or dismissed altogether as cowardice. Graves describes very …
“In the middle of a lecture I would have a sudden very clear experience of men on the march up the Béthune–La Bassée road; the men would be singing... These daydreams persisted like an alternate life and did not leave me until well in 1928. The scenes were nearly always recollections of my first four months in France; the emotion-recording apparatus seems to have failed after Loos.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On studying at Oxford University in 1919, Ch. 27
“At the end of my first term's work, I attended the usual college board to give an account of myself. The spokesman coughed, and said a little stiffly: "I understand, Mr. Graves, that the essays which you write for your English tutor are, shall I say, a trifle temperamental. It appears, indeed, that you prefer some authors to others.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls', avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. "Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?""Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated," Lawrence replied gravely.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My tutor I have already mentioned, Marcus Porcius Cato who was, in his own estimation at least, a living embodiment of that ancient Roman virtue which his ancestors had one after the other shown. He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about. He boasted particularly of Cato the Censor, who of all characters in Roman history is to me perhaps the most hateful, as having persistently championed the cause of "ancient virtue" and made it identical in the popular mind with churlishness, pedantry and harshness.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Athenodorus used to stroke his beard slowly and rhythmically as he talked, and told me once that it was this that made it grow so luxuriantly. He said that invisible seeds of fire streamed off from his fingers, which were food for the hairs. This was a typical Stoic joke at the expense of Epicurean speculative philosophy.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“James Burford, collier and fitter, was the oldest soldier of all. When I first spoke to him in the trenches, he said: "Excuse me, sir, will you explain what this here arrangement is on the side of my rifle?" "That's the safety catch. Didn't you do a musketry-course at the depôt?" "No, sir, I was a re-enlisted man, and I spent only a fortnight there. The old Lee-Metford didn't have no safety-catch." I asked him when he had last fired a rifle. "In Egypt in 1882," he said. "Weren't you in the South African War?" "I tried to re-enlist, but they told me I was too old, sir... My real age is sixty-three.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Having now been in the trenches for five months, I had passed my prime. For the first three weeks, an officer was of little use in the front line... Between three weeks and four weeks he was at his best, unless he happened to have any particular bad shock or sequence of shocks. Then his usefulness gradually declined as neurasthenia developed. At six months he was still more or less all right; but by nine or ten months, unless he had been given a few weeks' rest on a technical course, or in hospital, he usually became a drag on the other company officers. After a year or fifteen months he was often worse than useless.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On being in the trenches in France in 1915, Ch.16
“Nancy and I were married in January 1918 at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, she being just eighteen, and I twenty-two. George Mallory acted as the best man. Nancy had read the marriage-service for the first time that morning, and been so disgusted that she all but refused to go through with the wedding, though I had arranged for the ceremony to be modified and reduced to the shortest possible form. Another caricature scene to look back on: myself striding up the red carpet, wearing field-boots, spurs and sword; Nancy meeting me in a blue-check silk wedding-dress, utterly furious; packed benches on either side of the church, full of relatives; aunts using handkerchiefs; the choir boys out of tune; Nancy savagely muttering the responses, myself shouting them in a parade-ground voice.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus … this, that and the other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’, or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the ‘golden predicament’ from which I have never since become disentangled.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Caligula then reintroduced treason as a capital crime, ordered his speech to be at once engraved on a bronze tablet and posted on the wall of the House [where the Senate assembled for legislative and administrative work] above the seats of the Consuls, and rushed away. No more business was transacted that day; we were all too dejected. But the next day we lavished praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler and voted annual sacrifices to his Clemency. What else could we do? He had the army at his back, and power of life or death over us, and until someone was bold and clever enough to make a successful conspiracy against his life all that we could do was to humor him and hope for the best.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one's full face, because of the familiarity that mirrors give it, a certain toleration and even affection is felt; but I must say that when I first saw the model of the gold piece that the mint-masters were striking for me I grew angry and asked whether it was intended to be a caricature. My little head with its worried face perched on my long neck, and the Adam's apple standing out almost like a second chin, shocked me. But Messalina said: "No, my dear, that's really what you look like. In fact, it is rather flattering than otherwise.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The frog-pool wanted a king. Jove sent them Old King Log. I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log. The frog-pool wanted a king. Let Jove now send them Young King Stork. Caligula's chief fault: his stork-reign was too brief. My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent. I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread. I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again. Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar. Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful. King Stork shall prove again the nature of kings. By dulling the blade of tyranny I fell into great error. By whetting the same blade I might redeem that error. Violent disorders call for violent remedies. Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log. I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool. Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally. Schoolmasters seldom write well: it is difficult for any teacher to avoid either pomposity or, in the effort not to be pompous, a jocular conversational looseness. The clergy suffer from much the same occupational disability: they can seldom decide whether to use "the language of the market-place" or Biblical rhetoric. Men of letters usually feel impelled to cultivate an individual style — less because they feel sure of themselves as individuals than because they wish to carve a niche for themselves in literature; and nowadays an individual style usually means merely a peculiar range of inaccuracies, ambiguities, logical weaknesses and stylistic extravagancies. Trained journalists use a flat, over-simplified style, based on a study of what sells a paper and what does not, which is inadequate for most literary purposes.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The official style is at once humble, polite, curt and disagreeable: it derives partly from that used in Byzantine times by the eunuch slave-secretariat, writing stiffly in the name of His Sacred Majesty, whose confidence they enjoyed, to their fellow-slaves outside the palace precincts — for the Emperor had summary power over everyone; and partly from the style used by the cleric-bureaucracy of the Middle Ages, writing stiffly in the name of the feudal lords to their serfs and, though cautious of offending their employers, protected from injury by being servants of the Church, not of the Crown, and so subject to canon, not feudal, law. The official style of civil servants, so far as it recalls its Byzantine derivation, is written by slaves to fellow-slaves of a fictitious tyrant; and, so far as it recalls its mediaeval derivation, is written by members of a quasi-ecclesiastical body, on behalf of quasi-feudal ministers (who, being politicians, come under a different code of behaviour from theirs) to a serflike public.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief trouble with the official style is that it spreads far beyond the formal contexts to which it is suited. Most civil servants, having learned to write in this way, cannot throw off the habit. The obscurity of their public announcements largely accounts for the disrepute into which Departmental activities have fallen: for the public naturally supposes that Departments are as muddled and stodgy as their announcements. The habit of obscurity is partly caused by a settled disinclination among public servants to give a definite refusal even where assent is out of the question; or to convey a vigorous rebuke even where, in private correspondence, any person with self-respect would feel bound to do so. The mood is conveyed by a polite and emasculated style — polite because, when writing to a member of the public, the public servant is, in theory at least, addressing one of his collective employers; emasculated because, as a cog in the Government machine, he must make his phrases look as mechanical as possible by stripping them of all personal feeling and opinion.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source