Quotes from Goodbye to All That

Robert Graves ·  281 pages

Rating: (8.3K votes)


“Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses’ Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


“About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman’s education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


“Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet’s blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King’s evil; and Queen Anne when a child...”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


“This is a story of what I was, not what I am.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That



“England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language. I found serious conversation with my parents all but impossible.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


“...but [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.”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That


About the author

Robert Graves
Born place: in Wimbledon, The United Kingdom
Born date July 24, 1895
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“The sphere of sense, the Soul in its slumber; for all of the Soul that is in body is asleep and the true getting-up is not bodily but from the body: in any movement that takes the body with it there is no more than passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads


“Even though my Sunday school upbringing had taught me that God loved me, inwardly I always suspected that maybe He was more interested in making me miserable than in blessing me.”
― Eric Ludy, quote from When God Writes Your Love Story


“This is the way of love, I find; one longs so fervently for the beloved to achieve the best ends that he is spared nothing.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from The Last Enchantment


“LULL
(November, 1939)

The winds of hatred blow
Cold, cold across the flesh
And chill the anxious heart;
Intricate phobias grow
From each malignant wish
To spoil collective life.
Now each man stands apart.

We watch opinion drift,
Think of our separate skins.
On well-upholstered bums
The generals cough and shift
Playing with painted pins.
The arbitrators wait;
The newsmen suck their thumbs.
The mind is quick to turn
Away from simple faith
To the cant and fury of
Fools who will never learn;
Reason embraces death,
While out of frightened eyes
Still stares the wish to love.”
― Theodore Roethke, quote from The Collected Poems


“Copernicus formulated the heliocentric model of the solar system in the mid-1500s, but the Church didn't get around to punishing anyone for it until they threw Galileo in jail nearly a hundred years later.”
― John Joseph Adams, quote from The Living Dead


Interesting books

Vampire Mine
(9.7K)
Vampire Mine
by Kerrelyn Sparks
The Complete Poems
(340)
The Complete Poems
by John Wilmot
Echo
(4.9K)
Echo
by Francesca Lia Block
God Is Dead
(2.7K)
God Is Dead
by Ron Currie Jr.
Dexter Is Delicious
(15.9K)
Dexter Is Delicious
by Jeff Lindsay
Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays
(2.3K)
Resistance, Rebellio...
by Albert Camus

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.