Robert Graves Quotes

Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but...

Robert Graves

The Greek Myths - 1955 - Volume 1, Introduction.

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By Jesus’s time, the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a...

Robert Graves

King Jesus - 1946 - Chapter 21.

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Jehovah, it seems clear, was once regarded as a devoted son the the Great Goddess, who obeyed her in all things and by her favor swallowed up a number of variously named rival gods and godlings - the...

Robert Graves

King Jesus - 1946 - Chapter 21.

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The chief trouble with the official style is that it spreads far beyond the formal contexts to which it is suited. Most civil servants, having learned to write in this way, cannot throw off the...

Robert Graves

The Reader Over Your Shoulder - 1943 - Chapter 4 - "Where Is Good English to Be Found?".

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The official style is at once humble, polite, curt and disagreeable: it derives partly from that used in Byzantine times by the eunuch slave-secretariat, writing stiffly in the name of His Sacred...

Robert Graves

The Reader Over Your Shoulder - 1943 - Chapter 4 - ""The Use and Abuse of Official English."

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Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.

Robert Graves

The Reader Over Your Shoulder - 1943 - Chapter 3 - "Where Is Good English to Be Found?".

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Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally. Schoolmasters seldom write well: it is difficult for any teacher to avoid either pomposity or,...

Robert Graves

The Reader Over Your Shoulder - 1943 - Chapter 3 - "Where Is Good English to Be Found?".

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The frog-pool wanted a king. Jove sent them Old King Log. I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log. The frog-pool wanted a king. Let Jove now send them Young King Stork. Caligula's chief...

Robert Graves

Claudius the God - 1935 - Chapter 30.

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Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one's full face, because of the...

Robert Graves

Claudius the God - 1935 - Chapter 6.

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Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls', avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London,...

Robert Graves

Goodbye to All That - 1929 - Chapter 28.

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