All Quotes by Robert Frost
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
“Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.”
“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”
“But no, I was out for stars:”
“If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.”
“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
“It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.”
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
“I would not come in.”
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”
“I go to school the youth to learn the future.”
“What we live by we die by.”
“Nobody was ever meant, To remember or invent, What he did with every cent.”
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
“One aged man - one man - can't fill a house.”
“A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.”
“Some say the world will end in fire,”
“A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.”
“Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.”
“It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.”
“I could give all to Time except -- except”
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”
“Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.”
“Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.”
“You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.”
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
“The artist in me cries out for design.”
“I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.”
“To be social is to be forgiving.”
“The best way out is always through.”
“Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.”
“I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee”
“I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.”
“The middle of the road is where the white line is - and that's the worst place to drive.”
“I had a lovers quarrel with the world.”
“You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.”
“Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.”
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
“I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.”
“My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.”
“College is a refuge from hasty judgment.”
“The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
“The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.”
“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
“Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.”
“They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.”
“The only certain freedom's in departure.”
“I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
“I go to school the youth to learn the future.”
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
“Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.”
“The best way out is always through.”
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,”
“The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.”
“There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.”
“Ah, when to the heart of man Of a love or a season?”
“The rain to the wind said,”
“I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too.”
“And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”
“The nearest friends can go And living people, and things they understand.”
“Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor.”
“The best way out is always through.”
“Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.”
“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.”
“My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree But I am done with apple-picking now.”
“By good rights I ought not to have so much Leastways for me — and then they’ll be convinced.”
“Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.”
“I always have felt strange when we came home At one door as we entered at another.”
“To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.”
““Men work together,” I told him from the heart, “Whether they work together or apart.””
“I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.”
“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”
“I shall be telling this with a sigh And that has made all the difference.”
“The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.”
“"Don't let him cut my hand off— So. But the hand was gone already.”
“Her crop was a miscellany A great deal of none.”
“Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.”
“Fireflies in the Garden”
“But he sent her Good-by, And do everything!”
“Something inspires the only cow of late And think no more of wall-builders than fools.”
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
“My apple trees will never get across He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."”
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know That wants it down.”
“He moves in darkness as it seems to me, He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.””
“There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.”
“He saw her from the bottom of the stairs From up there always?—for I want to know."”
“Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.”
“She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."”
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
“It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.”
“The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it.”
“'My words are nearly always an offense. I should suppose. I can't say I see how.”
“'I can repeat the very words you were saying: They might as well not try to go at all.”
“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, She walks the sodden pasture lane.”
“Her pleasure will not let me stay. Is silver now with clinging mist.”
“The desolate, deserted trees, And vexes me for reason why.”
“Not yesterday I learned to know And they are better for her praise.”
“The Telephone”
“The Hyla breed Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow.”
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. And miles to go before I sleep.”
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
““My dear, There are only middles.”
“I’d like to get away from earth awhile I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
“I shall set forth for somewhere, But I shall be gone.”
“If one by one we counted people out For to be social is to be forgiving.”
“A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.”
“We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? How different from the way it ever stood?”
“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ”
“Do you know, Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.”
“Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.”
“The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.”
“Nature's first green is gold, Nothing gold can stay.”
“The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.”
“Why make so much of fragmentary blue When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue.”
“Acquainted with the Night”
“And then we saw him bolt. Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.”
“Love at the lips was touch I lived on air”
“How often already you've had to be told, I have to be gone for a season or so.”
“The birds that came to it through the air From too much dwelling on what has been.”
“Education is hanging around until you've caught on.”
“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.”
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
“You could not tell, and yet it looked as if Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.”
“Tree at my window, window tree, Between you and me.”
“That day she put our heads together, Mine with inner, weather.”
“One luminary clock against the sky I have been one acquainted with the night.”
“There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”
“If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes And blind me to a standstill if it must.”
“The way a crow”
“It must be the brook What we are.”
“Our life runs down in sending up the clock. And there is something sending up the sun.”
“The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me.”
“Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A least lyric alone may have a hard time, but it can make a beginning, and lyric will be piled on lyric till all are easily heard as sung or spoken by a person in a scene — in character, in a setting. By whom, where and when is the question.”
“A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.”
“A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic.”
“I have miles to go before I sleep”
“Whose woods these are I think I know. To watch his woods fill up with snow.”
“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.”
“My little horse must think it queer The darkest evening of the year.”
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
“Let me be the one To do what is done.”
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
“I turned to speak to God At least not over half.”
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.”
“And be all plunderers curst. Of being brought down to the real.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
“Dust always blowing about the town, Some of the blowing dust was gold.”
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
“All the dust the wind blew high Some of the dust was really gold.”
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
“Such was life in the Golden Gate: 'We all must eat our peck of gold.”
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
“GATHERING LEAVES”
“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”
“The best way out is always through.”
“Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any. But not much in between, unless a college.”
“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill. And you´re two months back in the middle of March.”
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”
“But yield who will to their separation, For heaven and the future´s sakes.”
“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.”
“The old dog barks backward without getting up; I can remember when he was a pup.”
“The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.”
“The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.”
“Who said it mattered / what monkeys did or didn't understand? / They might not understand the burning-glass. / They might not understand the sun itself. / It's knowing what to do with things that counts.”
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”
“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.”
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
“The land may vary more; And the people look at the sea.”
“Humor is the most engaging cowardice.”
“Never ask of money spent What he did with every cent.”
“The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.”
“Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave, But the strong are saying nothing until they see.”
“The only way round is through.”
“Two such as you with such a master speed Together wing to wing and oar to oar.”
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”
“‘Twas Age imposed on poems And yet not know they have it.”
“Education is hanging around until you've caught on.”
“It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”
“There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”
“I always entertain great hopes.”
“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting … Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”
“You can't get too much winter in the winter.”
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
“Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.”
“No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.”
“The land was ours before we were the land's. Before we were her people.”
“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
“Such as we were we gave ourselves outright Such as she was, such as she would become.”
“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.”
“She is as in a field a silken tent So that in guys it gently sways at ease.”
“We love things we love what they are.”
“But strictly held by none, is loosely bound Is of the slightest bondage made aware.”
“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
“Hell is a half-filled auditorium.”
“Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.”
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
“I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”
“They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.”
“She drew back; he was calm With the tender-headed flower.”
“Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar.”
“He would declare and could himself believe Her tone of meaning but without the words.”
“There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.”
“We disparage reason. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”
“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.”
“Deliver us from committees.”
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
“Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.”
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
“Have I not walked without an upward look It was a risk I had to take — and took.”
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
“I stopped my song and almost heart, That looks in onto a mood apart.”
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
“All those who try to go it sole alone, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.”
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
“Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul.”
“Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.”
“O Star (the fairest one in sight) Say something! And it says "I burn."”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.”
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
“It asks a little of us here. To stay our minds on and be staid.”
“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
“If this uncertain age in which we dwell I should not curse myself with it to hell”
“I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.”
“Humor is the most engaging cowardice.”
“They've tried to grasp with too much social fact That's how we feel — and we're no special mystics.”
“You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.”
“For dear me, why abandon a belief”
“We can't appraise the time in which we act. We know enough to know it for adverse.”
“A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.”
“I have kept hidden in the instep arch Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”
“I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.”
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
“Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.”
“The heart can think of no devotion”
“A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.”
“You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.”
“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
“Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.”
“People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that’s us.”
“Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.”
“How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.”
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
“It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching.”
“Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.”
“You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.”
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -”
“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.”
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
“I am assured at any rate To start the world all over at.”
“The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.”
“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.”
“It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling.”
“If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia.”
“Till we came to be Anywhere in space.”
“Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.”
“It is the future that creates his present. All is an interminable chain of longing.”
“I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.”
““Well, who begun it?” Or what it was foughten for.”
“The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”
“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”
“Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.”
“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.”
“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.”
“You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.”
“All out of doors looked darkly in at him That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.”
“Summoning artists to participate”
“Today is for my cause a day of days.”
“And this is no aristocratic joke”
“"New order of the ages" did they say?”
“We ran as if to meet the moon.”
“Everyone knows the glory of the twain”
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
“Come fresh from an election like the last,”
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.”
“Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.”
“It makes the prophet in us all presage Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.”
“Ah, when to the heart of man”
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
“The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”
“The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.”
“The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.”
“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
“I always entertain great hopes.”
“I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.”
“You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.”
“I'd like to get away from earth awhile”
“Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.”
“I always entertain great hopes.”
“The only certain freedom's in departure.”
“Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64)”
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
“INTO MY OWN”
“You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.”
“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
“Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.”