“there are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue and the other is to compel men to truth.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius: from the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius

“You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid.
Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.”
― Robert Graves


“There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.”
― Robert Graves

“She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.”
― Robert Graves

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”
― Robert Graves

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

“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”
― Robert Graves


“The difference between you and her
(whom I to you did once prefer)
Is clear enough to settle:
She like a diamond shone, but you
Shine like an early drop of dew
Poised on a red rose petal.

The dew-drop carries in its eye
Mountain and forest, sea and sky,
With every change of weather;
Contrariwise, a diamond splits
The prospect into idle bits
That none can piece together.”
― Robert Graves

“Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience': They're talking to a single person all the time.”
― Robert Graves

“I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.”
― Robert Graves

“Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius