241 Quotes by Robert Graves

Love at first sight’some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely at the surprised heart So that the cheek blanches then blushes.

There’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.

The familiar Olympian system was then agreed upon as a compromise between Hellenic and pre-Hellenic views: a divine family of six gods and six goddesses, headed by the co-sovereigns Zeus and Hera and forming a Council of Gods in Babylonian style.

I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

Wakeful they lie.

Pan’s sudden shout which terrified the Titans became proverbial and has given the word ‘panic’ to the English language.

The first thing that happened was that Helen became an invalid – we know now that there was nothing wrong with her, but Livilla had given her the choice of taking to her bed as if she were ill or taking to her bed because she was ill.

Soldiers really are an extraordinary race of men, as tough as shield-leather, as superstitious as Egyptians and as sentimental as Sabine grandmothers.

The Governor of Syria, when he heard of this horrid act called a council of his staff to decide whether Mithridates should be avenged by a punitive expedition against his murderer, who now reigned in his stead; but the general opinion seemed to be that the more treacherous and bloody the behaviour of Eastern kings on our frontier, the better for us – the security of the Roman Empire resting on the mutual mistrust of our neighbours – and that nothing should be done.