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.
Than smoke and mist who better could appraise, the kindred spirit of an inner haze?
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.
You've got to love what's loveable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
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.
A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look.
Depression occurs when one looks back with no pride, and looks forward with no hope.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend.
There never was any harm truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.
A man will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body -- the wishbone.
No, in country money, the country scale of gain, The requisite lift of spirit has never been found.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.
I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
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!
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.
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.
Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
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.
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.
The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.
Nature is cruel; it's man whose is sick of blood -- and man doesn't seem so very sick of it.
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
Of all crimes the worst
Is to steal the glory
From the great and brave,
Even more accursed
Than to rob the grave.
Let's get my incantation right:
I wish I may, I wish I might
Give earth another satellite.
Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
Lord, I have loved Your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high,
Or low and stormy.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
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.
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.
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.
The chance is the remotest, Of its going much longer unnoticed, That I'm not keeping pace With the headlong human race.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.
An idea is a feat of association.
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.
If you're looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts.
I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.
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.
People are inexterminable -- like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices -- that's us.
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true.
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.
Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.
Both T.S. Eliot and I like to play, but I like to play euchre, while he likes to play Eucharist.
Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.
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.
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.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.
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.
What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.
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.
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.
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.
When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
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.
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.
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.
The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
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.
Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other's business.
There is little much beyond the grave, but the strong are saying nothing until they see.
As for his evil tidings,
Belshazzar's overthrow,
Why hurry to tell Belshazzar
What soon enough he would know?
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
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.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orch-ard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night.
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.
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.
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.
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.