Quotes from Robert Graves

I love, therefore I am.

What we now call 'finance' is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written, the world would end.

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.

There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

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

Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.

The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

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.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

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

Why do men so eagerly take the leash of marriage into their mouths as if it was going to be just a walk in the park.

Marriage is a contradiction in terms of endearment.

Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued.