Robert Frost > Quotes

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“We love the things we love for what they are.”
― Robert Frost

“The Road Not Taken

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;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

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

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
― Robert Frost

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
― Robert Frost

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
― Robert Frost

“If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.”
― Robert Frost

“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 twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
― Robert Frost

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
― Robert Frost

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― Robert Frost

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
― Robert Frost

“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.”
― Robert Frost

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

“I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
― Robert Frost

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

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

“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
― Robert Frost

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
― Robert Frost

“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
― Robert Frost

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

“There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.”
― Robert Frost

“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”
― Robert Frost

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
― Robert Frost

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

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

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
― Robert Frost

“We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
― Robert Frost

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

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

“The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive.”
― Robert Frost

“The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
― Robert Frost

“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
― Robert Frost

“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”
― Robert Frost

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”
― Robert Frost

“Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire”
― Robert Frost

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”
― Robert Frost

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.”
― Robert Frost