Title Image - Quotes by Author Robert FrostPhoto Credit: WikiMedia Commons

Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Robert Frost. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.

Wikipedia Summary for Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

--Robert Frost

Than smoke and mist who better could appraise, the kindred spirit of an inner haze?

--Robert Frost

These doorsteps seldom have a visitor.
The warping boards pull out their own old nails
With none to tread and put them in their place.

--Robert Frost

You've got to love what's loveable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

--Robert Frost

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that is the wife who can't cook and will.

--Robert Frost

A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look.

--Robert Frost

Depression occurs when one looks back with no pride, and looks forward with no hope.

--Robert Frost

When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.

--Robert Frost

Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

A man will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body -- the wishbone.

--Robert Frost

No, in country money, the country scale of gain, The requisite lift of spirit has never been found.

--Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch as sweet as I could bear.

--Robert Frost

Good fences make good neighbours.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost

Would pay in cities for good trees like those, Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools Could hang enough on to pick off enough. A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!

--Robert Frost

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be. She loves the bare, the withered tree, She walks the sodden pasture lane.

--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

Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.

--Robert Frost

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.

--Robert Frost

Thinking isn't to agree or disagree-that's voting.

--Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.

--Robert Frost

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

--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

Don't be an agnostic. Be something.

--Robert Frost

I never feel more at home than at a ballgame.

--Robert Frost

War is for everyone, for children too.
I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't.
The best way is to come uphill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.

--Robert Frost

The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.

--Robert Frost

The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

--Robert Frost

Nature is cruel; it's man whose is sick of blood -- and man doesn't seem so very sick of it.

--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

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

--Robert Frost

Of all crimes the worst
Is to steal the glory
From the great and brave,
Even more accursed
Than to rob the grave.

--Robert Frost

Let's get my incantation right:
I wish I may, I wish I might
Give earth another satellite.

--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

Lord, I have loved Your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high,
Or low and stormy.

--Robert Frost

But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.

--Robert Frost

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.

--Robert Frost

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true?
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.

--Robert Frost

Longer Version:

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true?
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
As I sit here, and often times, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
-- -- from "The Black Cottage.


I play better tennis because the court is there.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

Man that is of woman born is apt to be as vain has his mother.

--Robert Frost

The chance is the remotest, Of its going much longer unnoticed, That I'm not keeping pace With the headlong human race.

--Robert Frost

He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

--Robert Frost

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been -- alone, As all must be, I said within my heart, Whether they work together or apart.

--Robert Frost

There is the fear that we shan't prove worthy in the eyes of someone who knows us at least as well as we know ourselves. That is the fear of God. And there is the fear of Man -fear that men won't understand us and we shall be cut of from them.

--Robert Frost

Diplomacy, n : 1. The patriotic art of lying for one's country. 2. The art of letting someone have your way. 3. The art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

--Robert Frost

Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost


An idea is a feat of association.

--Robert Frost

Longer Version:

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.


If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.

--Robert Frost

If you're looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts.

--Robert Frost

I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.

--Robert Frost

Come grow old with me, for the best is yet to come!

--Robert Frost

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.

--Robert Frost

People are inexterminable -- like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices -- that's us.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true.

--Robert Frost

I don't like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend ... asked me to go to the top of the Empire State Building once, and I told him that he shouldn't treat New York as a sight-it's feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place else.

--Robert Frost

Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.

--Robert Frost

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.

--Robert Frost

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.

--Robert Frost

The sidelong glance is what you depend on.

--Robert Frost

Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

--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

Nations like the Cuban and the Swiss
Can never hope to wage a Global Mission.
No Holy Wars for them. The most the small
Can ever give us is a nuisance brawl.

--Robert Frost

I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.

--Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

--Robert Frost

You know how cunningly mankind is planned:
We have one loving and one hating hand.
The loving's made to hold each other like,
While with the hating other hand we strike.

--Robert Frost

The only way around is through.

--Robert Frost

I heard someone say he Carl Sandburg was the kind of writer who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by being translated into another language.

--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

Only God and I knew what I meant when I wrote it, now only God knows.

--Robert Frost

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

--Robert Frost

Longer Version:

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life -- not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.


More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts.

--Robert Frost

Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other's business.

--Robert Frost

There is little much beyond the grave, but the strong are saying nothing until they see.

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

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

--Robert Frost

I am sure I have heard this several times from places I can't recall, but it's not already in the Gaia Quotes database, so I add this profound insight from the fields of psychological healing and spiritual evolution. It sure has helped me.

--Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the orch-ard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night.

--Robert Frost

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting... Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

--Robert Frost

Let those possess the land, and only those,
Who love it with a love so strong and stupid
That they may be abused and taken advantage of
And made fun of by business, law, and art.

--Robert Frost

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

--Robert Frost

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

--Robert Frost

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went- Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

--Robert Frost

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