Robert Graves Quotes

Beauty is only about relationships. Nothing is beautiful on its own.

Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.

You only recognize how good something is if you've been through the bad.

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, That is the sky.

But thou that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

Mirror becomes a razor when it's broken. A stick becomes a flute when it's loved.

Be the ugly one, look at the nice one.

Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire.

People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.

One day you're waiting for the sky to fall, The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all.

Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point.

Observe, Remember, Compare.

I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.

God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.

As we're standing there I realize we're almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light side of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.

A jerk on a motorcycle is equal to a leaf, because I find it beautiful when these things fall.

The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made.

Gold lends a touch of beauty even to the ugly.

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.

Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.