Robert Frost Quotes

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

I hate the idea that you ought to read the whole of anybody. ~ Robert Frost

Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books. ~ Robert Frost

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

For I have had too much
Of apple-picking:I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired. ~ Robert Frost

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed. ~ Robert Frost

We love the things we love for what they are. ~ Robert Frost

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away / You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

He studied Latin like the violin, because he liked it. ~ Robert Frost

I've read dozens of interviews and accounts that basically come down to How Poets Do It and the truth is they're all do-lally and they're all different. There's Gerard Manly Hopkins in his black Jesuit clothes lying face down on the ground to look at an individual bluebell, Robert Frost who never used a desk, was once caught short by a poem coming and wrote it on the sole of his shoe, T.S. Eliot in his I'm-not-a-Poet suit with his solid sensible available-for-poetry three hours a day, Ted Hughes folded into his tiny cubicle at the top of the stairs where there is no window, no sight or smell of earth or animal but the rain clatter on the roof bows him to the page, Pablo Neruda who grandly declared poetry should only ever be handwritten, and then added his own little bit of bonkers by saying: in green ink. Poets are their own nation. Most of them know. ~ Niall Williams

But all We did that day was mingle great and small Footprints in summer dust as if we drew The figure of our being less than two But more than one as yet. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

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

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

Tree At My Window
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. ~ Robert Frost

Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspectthey 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. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

Hell is a half-filled auditorium. ~ Robert Frost

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water. ~ Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air. ~ Robert Frost

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom. ~ Robert Frost

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ Robert Frost

Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night. ~ Robert Frost

What shall it be? The easy path? Or the road less traveled? Ask yourself: Can you afford to maintain your unmoving place in life? Are you willing to stay in the status quo, or do you want to do something so that one day you will not look back on a life strewn with regrets?

As we struggle under the weight of our circumstances when the vision of our hopes and dreams grows dim, we must never forget what Robert Frost wrote about the positive impact that taking a less-traveled direction can make on a person's life... ~ Art E. Berg

Let me be the one To do what is done. ~ Robert Frost

I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out. ~ Robert Frost

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." ~ Robert Frost

Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30. ~ Robert Frost

People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me. ~ Robert Frost

Live and let live, believe and let believe.
'Twas said the lesser gods were only traits
Of the one awful God. Just so the saints
Are God's white light refracted into colors. ~ Robert Frost

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you. ~ Robert Frost

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

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

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

Bounds should be set
To ingenuity for being so cruel
In bringing change unheralded on the unready. ~ Robert Frost

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

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone. ~ Robert Frost

When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned, then admitted, "When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows."
Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can't figure out what a writer is trying to say but think it sounds intelligent will typically resort to calling such work "daring," "provocative," or "complex." An unholy alliance of writers and readers is at work here. ~ Ralph Keyes

There is much in nature against us. But we forget:
Take nature altogether since time began,
Including human nature, in peace and war,
And it must be a little more in favor of man ... ~ Robert Frost

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. ~ Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a forest and I chose the one less traveled by and it made all the difference. ~ Robert Frost

Our lives laid down in war and peace may not
Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight.
And that they may be is the only prayer
Worth praying. May my sacrifice
Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight. ~ Robert Frost

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 ~ Robert Frost

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance. ~ Robert Frost

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

Any work of art must first of all tell a story. ~ Robert Frost

The only certain freedom's in departure. ~ Robert Frost

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

...all the fun's in how you say a thing. ~ Robert Frost

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

Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves. ~ Robert Frost

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family- But not much in between unless a college. ~ Robert Frost

I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. ~ Robert Frost

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market. ~ Robert Frost

I fail to see what fun, what satisfaction / A God can find in laughing at how badly / Men fumble at the possibilities ... ~ Robert Frost

In heaven we are all ghostwriters, if we write at all. ~ Robert Frost

Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred.
But here is not a question of what's sacred;
Rather of what to face or run away from.
I'd hate to be a runaway from nature. ~ Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, and wants it down. ~ Robert Frost

The middle of the road is where the white line is - and that's the worst place to drive. ~ Robert Frost

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

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

Spare me the setting of my fate to music. ~ Robert Frost

Good fences make good neighbors. ~ Robert Frost

Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have. ~ Robert Frost

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

The black stream, catching on a sunken rock, Flung backward on itself in one white wave, And the white water rode the black forever. - ROBERT FROST ~ Kevin Fedarko

The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing. ~ Robert Frost

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. ~ Robert Frost

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost ~ Robert Frost

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

The artist in me cries out for design. ~ Robert Frost

Love has earth to which she clings ... ~ Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the on less traveled by,
and that has made all the differernce ~ Robert Frost

I never feel more at home than at a ballgame. ~ Robert Frost

Love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly."
Robert Frost ~ Madelyn Hill

All the fun is in how you say a thing. ~ Robert Frost

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.

'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'

We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses. ~ Robert Frost

As for his evil tidings,
Belshazzar's overthrow,
Why hurry to tell Belshazzar
What soon enough he would know? ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

In 2013 there were 7,427 poetry readings in April, many on a Thursday. For anyone born in 1928 who pays attention to poetry, the numerousness is astonishing. In April 1948, there were 15 readings in the United States, 12 by Robert Frost. So I claim. The figures are imaginary, but you get the point. ~ Donald Hall

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

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling. ~ Robert Frost

Before now poetry has taken notice
Of wars, and what are wars but politics
Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody? ~ Robert Frost

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~ Robert Frost

The only way around is through." Robert Frost ~ Change Your Life Publishing

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman. ~ Robert Frost

One could do worse than being a swinger of birches. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." - Robert Frost ~ Penny Reid

The only way out is to go through ~ Robert Frost

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the winter breeze
A hundred miles away. ~ Robert Frost

In three simple words I can sum up all I have learned from life, Life Goes On. ~ Robert Frost

Stay gold Ponyboy. Stay gold.

--Johnny quoting Robert Frost ~ S.E. Hinton

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past. ~ Robert Frost

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. ~ Robert Frost