Robert Frost Quotes

They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.

You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination - what's right and what's wrong what's good and what's bad.

For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.As I sit here, and often times, I wishI could be monarch of a desert landI could devote and dedicate foreverTo the truths we keep coming back and back to.––from "The Black Cottage

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

Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.

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

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm."How often already you've had to be told,Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.Dread fifty above more than fifty below."I have to be gone for a season or so.

There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

I could give all to Time except -- exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would not part with I have kept.

We love the things we love for what they are.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat a homesickness or alovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Fireflies in the GardenBy Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

No tears and the writer no tears and the reader.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less travelled by And that has made all the difference.

To be social is to be forgiving.

Where had I heard this wind beforeChange like this to a deeper roar?What would it take my standing there for,Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was past.Somber clouds in the west were massed.Out in the porch's sagging floor,leaves got up in a coil and hissed,Blindly struck at my knee and missed.Something sinister in the toneTold me my secret must be known:Word I was in the house aloneSomehow must have gotten abroad,Word I was in my life alone,Word I had no one left but God.

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

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept.... My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

Home is the place where when you have to go there They have to take you in.

The ArmfulFor every parcel I stoop down to seizeI lose some other off my arms and knees,And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,Extremes too hard to comprehend at. onceYet nothing I should care to leave behind.With all I have to hold with hand and mindAnd heart, if need be, I will do my best.To keep their building balanced at my breast.I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;Then sit down in the middle of them all.I had to drop the armful in the roadAnd try to stack them in a better load.

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

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

Home is the place when you have to go there they have to take you in.

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.

Nature's first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf's a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

Never ask of money spent Where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.

They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars—on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.

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.

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

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.

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 sawAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong the harp-like morning-glory strings,Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,As if she played unheard the tendernessThat wrought on him beside her in the night.

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.

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)

Don't be agnostic - be something.

The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

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

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

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...

I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

For dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true

Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth's unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one.

All thought is a feat of association.

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart.

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desire,I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twiceI think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better.