“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
― 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
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
― 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
“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
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
― 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
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
― Robert Frost
“If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”
― Robert Frost
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost
“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― 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
“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 am not a teacher, but an awakener.”
― 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
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
― Robert Frost
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
― 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
“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
― 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
“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
― Robert Frost
“I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.”
― Robert Frost
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”
― Robert Frost
“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
― 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
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”
― Robert Frost
“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”
― 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
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
― Robert Frost
“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”
― 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
“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
“We ran as if to meet the moon.”
― Robert Frost
“How many things would you attempt
If you knew you could not fail”
― Robert Frost
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
― Robert Frost
“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
― Robert Frost
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The 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
“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
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
― Robert Frost
“The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
― Robert Frost
“Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That’s voting.”
― Robert Frost
“Acquainted with the Night
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.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.”
― 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
“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. 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.”
― 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