241 Quotes by Robert Graves

Once you give way to a metaphor, Claudius, which is rare, you pursue it too far. Surely you remember Athenodorus’s injunctions against this sort of thing? Well, call Sejanus the maggot and get it done with; then return to your usual homely style!

Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can’t complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave ’s narrowness, though not its peace.

My plans were vague. I talked liberty to many of my friends and, you know how it is, when one talks liberty everything seems beautifully simple. One expects all gates to open and all walls to fall flat and all voices to shout for joy.

The Argonauts looked at one another in amazement and exclaimed with one voice: ‘Hercules!

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate.

Most men – it is my experience – are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.

The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people’s wills.

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 horrors of sordid passion, and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.