Robert Frost Quotes

As a confirmed astronomer
I'm always for a better sky.

I still say the only education worth anything is self-education.

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

All great things are done for their own sake.

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.<

There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will come to nothing and be wasted. But some of it ought to go together under one idea. That idea is the thing to write on and write into the title at the head of your paper ... One idea and a few subordinate ideas - [the trick is] to have those happen to you as you read and catch them - not let them escape you ... The sidelong glance is what you depend on. You look at your author but you keep the tail of your eye on what is happening over and above your author in your own mind and nature.

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

The ear is the only writer and the only true reader.

Fortunately, we don't need to know how bad an age is. There is something we can always be doing without reference to how good or bad the age is.

It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon's trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.

It's God - I recognised him from Blake's picture.

Too long I've owed you this apology
For the apparently unmeaning sorrow
You were afflicted with in those old days.
But it was of the essence of the trial
You shouldn't understand it at the time.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

One aged man - one man - can't fill a house.

We shall be known by the delicacy of where we stop short.

Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury.

Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

A name with meaning could bring up a child,
Taking the child out of the parents' hands.
Better a meaningless name, I should say,
As leaving more to nature and happy chance.
Name children some names and see what you do.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. both have their moments. the intervals are the tough things.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

The only certain freedom's in departure.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.

RANGE-FINDING The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

Nature does not complete things. She is chaotic. Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall.

Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take-and took.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.

Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.

Both T.S. Eliot and I like to play, but I like to play euchre, while he likes to play Eucharist.

What are we?
Young or new?
We must be something.

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.

One of my wishes is that those dark trees. So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze. Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom. But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day into their vastness I should steal away. Fearless of ever finding open land, or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back. Or those should not set forth upon my track. To overtake me, who should miss me here. And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew,-only more sure of all I though was true.

Of course there is matter for remark in poems. Nobody denies that. But it must be solemnly laid on everybody in this world to make his own observations and remarks. That's what we mean by thinking, and that's about all we mean. A teacher says to a pupil "Watch me notice a few things in the next few months: let's see you notice a few things too."

All thought is a feat of association; having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew

Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm-bound-away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.

Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.

Haven't you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns?

Memento mori and obey the Lord.
Art and religion love the somber chord.

Skepticism, is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, Well, what have we here?

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

Out, Out

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them 'Supper.' At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!'
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the wa

If one by one we counted people out

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves.

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one,
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

A Girl's Garden"

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, 'Why not?'

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, 'Just it.'

And he said, 'That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.'

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village thi

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.

We get twitted now and then on how we made this country. Well, we took the whole business, of course. It's not just that corner that we took from Mexico. When we got it all together, we got a very shapely country-the best continental cut in all the world, between the two oceans and in the right temperature zone.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage ...

What makes a nation in the beginning is a good piece of geography.

The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, stay up and read
Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
By waiting up instead of getting up.

No, this is no beginning.
Then an end?
End is a gloomy word.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Out alone in the winter rain, / Intent on giving and taking pain.

My sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be.

Everyone asks for freedom for himself,
The man free love, the businessman free trade,
The writer and talker free speech and free press.

Ants are a curious race

The Master Speed No speed of wind or water rushing by but you have speed far greater. You can climb back up a stream of radiance to the sky, and back through history up the stream of time. And you were given this swiftness, not for haste nor chiefly that you may go where you will, but in the rush of everything to waste, that you may have the power of standing still
off any still or moving thing you say. Two such as you with such a master speed From one another once you are agreed that life is only life forevermore together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Let me be the one To do what is done.

I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great

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.

One age is like another for the soul.

We go to school to learn what books to read for the rest of our lives.

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth.

I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there.

The problem for the King is just how strict
The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law
And discipline should be in school and state ...

Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us.
Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth,
Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

The best thing we're put here for's to see; The strongest thing that's given us to see with's a telescope. Someone in every town, seems to me, owes it to the town to keep one.

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

The sidelong glance is what you depend on.

We cannot tell some people what it is believe, partly because they are too stupid to understand, partly because we are too proudly vague to explain.

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.

Loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round

We ran as if to meet the moon.

O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us less brief ... Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst ...