241 Quotes by Robert Graves

When the immense drugged universe explodesIn a cascade of unendurable colourAnd leaves us gasping naked,This is no more than the ectasy of chaos:Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal loveWhich alone, as we know certainly, restoresFragmentation into true being.Ecstasy of Chaos

To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!

Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses’ Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser.

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman’s education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.

His one fault, if you may call it so, was that he kept silent in the presence of evil when speech would not remedy it.