Best Goodbye To All That Quotes by Robert Graves

"I did not know what ‘vulgar’ meant; it had to be explained to me."

"My father, then, met my mother some time in the early nineties."

"My best comic turn is a double-jointed pelvis; I can sit on a table and tap like the Fox sisters with it."

"He wrote, to the scandal of his contemporaries: ‘I am a historian before I am a Christian; my object is simply to find out how the things actually occurred.’"

"I remember the servants’ bedrooms. They were on the top landing, at the dullest side of the house, and by a convention of the times, the only rooms without carpets or linoleum."

"Children seldom quarrel with their grand-parents, and I have been able to think of my mother and father as grand-parents."

"I remember my mother, in the treasure room of the British Museum, telling us with bright eyes that all these wonderful things were ours."

"My mother used to tell us stories about inventors and doctors who gave their lives for the suffering, and poor boys who struggled to the top of the tree, and saintly men who made examples of themselves."

"In English preparatory and public schools romance is necessarily homosexual."

"I tried violent resistance, but as the odds were always heavily against me this merely encouraged the ragging."

"I’ll do the same thing again to anyone else who, after scribbling impertinent remarks on my private papers, refused to apologize."

"I take you to my sister. She very nice. Very good jig-a-jig. Not much money. Very cheap. Very good. I take you now. Plenty champagne for me?"

"I will wear a red waistcoat, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will!"

"He once ran away: taking nothing with him but his beloved mathematics books."

"But I don’t want to be shot at. I have a wife and pigs at home."

"We are at present wading in blood up to our necks. Send me fags and a life-belt. This war is a booger."

"The old Lee-Metford didn’t have no safety-catch."

"Don’t forget to write to his next-of-kin. Usual sort of letter; tell them he died a soldier’s death, anything you like. I’m not going to report it as suicide."

"I said: ‘Yes, I have, but so had Crawshay Bailey’s brother Norwich.’"

"He had begun telling me just how much I could expect from the men at my platoon inspection of rifles and equipment, when a soldier came rushing in, his eyes blank with horror and excitement. ‘Gas, sir, gas! They’re using gas!’"

"A colossal bombardment by the French at Souchez, a few miles away – continuous roar of artillery, coloured flares, shells bursting all along the ridge by Notre Dame de Lorette."

"I don’t want to go to the trenches no more, I want to go over the sea where the Kayser can’t shoot bombs at me."

"No one is to carry sketches of our position or anything to be likely of service to the enemy."

"Everyone was drinking a lot; the subalterns, allowed whisky for a treat, grew rowdy."

"By the time we reached Cambrin, the battalion had marched about twenty miles that day."

"A grey, watery dawn broke at last behind the German lines; the bombardment, surprisingly slack all night, brisked up a little."

"He that shall endure to the end, shall be saved."

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

"Though thousands languish and fall beside thee, And tens of thousands around thee perish, Yet still it shall not come nigh thee."

"To an inheritance incorruptible … Through faith unto salvation, Ready to be revealed at the last trump."

"You bloody cowards, are you leaving me to go on alone?"

"Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they’re all f—ing dead."

"I do think you’re the most heartless beast I’ve ever met."

"Captain Graves, sir, we do not like our sergeant-major. He do curse, and he do swear, and he do drink, and he do smoke, and he is a man of lowly origin too."
9179812

"The morning and the evening still have but one star apiece."

"The blood of the dead and the dying, the blood of the ‘common soldier’ from his ‘slight wounds’ will not cry to us in vain."

"We are proud of our men, and they in turn have to be proud of us."

"The beds are too narrow to lie therein and the coverlet too small to wrap myself therewith."

"We only need that force of character behind all motives to see this monstrous world tragedy brought to a victorious ending."

"The only one temperature for the women of the British race, and that is white heat."

"It was enough to be honourably wounded and bound for home."

"We shall not flinch one iota, but when the war is over he must not grudge us, when we hear the bugle call of ‘Lights out’, a brief, very brief, space of time to withdraw into our secret chambers and share, with Rachel the Silent, the lonely anguish of a bereaved heart."

"I could fall asleep sitting down, standing, marching, lying on a stone floor, or in any other position, at a moment’s notice at any time of day or night."

"They loathe munition-workers, and would be only too glad of a chance to shoot a few."

"But these chaps would bring you back and put you in a dug-out in Heaven."

"I had once played at Harlech as a junior member of the Royal St David’s, but resigned when I found it bad for my temper."

"They have all done their share, and we, as women, will do ours without murmuring and without complaint."

"I have kept no records of this time, but the memory of its misery survives."

"The only inconvenience caused by this death was that Cox’s Bank stopped my pay, and I had difficulty in persuading it to honour my cheques."

"I have since substantiated the flight from the wood of a great many Cameronians, and their return under Father McShane."

"I recognized the quality of the voices. ‘The First Battalion have been in it again,’ I said to Roberts."
9179812

"The conscientious objector is a brave man. He will be remembered as one of the few noble actors in this world drama when the impartial historian of the future sums up the history of this awful war."

"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it."

"I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust."

"On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them."

"The only serious outbreak took place at Rhyl. There a two days’ mutiny of young Canadians caused much destruction and several deaths. The signal for the rising was a cry: ‘Come on, the Bolsheviks!’"

"Everybody suddenly burst out singing, And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom."

"I had sworn on the very day of my demobilization never to be under anyone’s orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing."

"Having won the war, they were satisfied and left the rest to Lloyd George."

"I found that most people bought tea by price and not by quality."

"There’s few can do the sum before you take the stuff off the scales, and there’s fewer still who take the trouble to weigh up again when they get back home."

"But you know there isn’t a single cottage for rent anywhere."

"I could recognize the principal varieties of babies’ screams: hunger, indigestion, wetness, pins, boredom, wanting to be played with; and learned to disregard all but the more important ones."

"We did all the hard work, and when we go everything will run down; it’s running down already. And they’ll have to call us back, or if not, the dagoes; and we don’t see why they should benefit."

"I shall not attempt to describe the Arabian Nights buffet, so splendid that it has remained a mere blur in my memory."

"Thinking how difficult conditions were for the labourers’ wives kept Nancy permanently depressed."

"I went on doing my mechanical tasks in a trance until I had time to sit down and record it."

"Egypt, being so near Europe, is not a savage country."

"The climate is good, the country beautiful, the things admirable, the beings curious and disgusting."

"I published a volume of poems every year from 1920 to 1925; after The Pierglass, which appeared in 1921, I made no attempt to please the ordinary reading public."

"We parted on May 6th, 1929. She, of course, insisted on keeping the children."