Robert Frost

Quotes

• “Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but...”
• “Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though w...”
• “You are all probably taking literature classes in which the professors teach how to get behind authors' words to determi...”
• “There was the book of profile tales declaring For the emboldened politicians daring To break with followers when in the ...”
• “And be all plunderers curst. 'The best way to hate is the worst. 'Tis to find what the hated need, Never mind of what ac...”
• “I can repeat the very words you were saying: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man...”
• “The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from th...”
• “O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud - It will not do to say o...”
• “Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure...”
• “I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a s...”
• “You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by c...”
• “The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still,...”
• “So much those heroes knew and understood, I mean the great four, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison So much ...”
• “It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, ...”
• “Everyone knows the glory of the twain Who gave America the aeroplane To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane. Some poor ...”
• “But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep." Taken from a popular poem by Robert Frost, these two lines ...”
• “If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole word, then it isn't worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must inc...”
• “This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny's A brook that was the water of the hous...”
• “Attributed in Ray Josephs, "Robert Frost's Secret", in William Nichols (ed.) Words to Live By (Simon and Schuster, 1959)...”
• “Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing...”
• “I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree cou...”
• “But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make...”
• “And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attemp...”
• “I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me A...”
• “New order of the ages" did they say? If it looks none too orderly today, 'Tis a confusion it was ours to start So in it ...”
• “           Who said it mattered What monkeys did or didn't understand?...”
• “A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward e...”
• “If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off th...”
• “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 strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the com...”
• “The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are ...”
• “As for the woods' excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperienc...”
• “It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of...”
• “It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chi...”
• “You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in i...”
• “My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside...”
• “What I'm trying to do is something defined by Robert Frost: when he said "a poem is a momentary stay against confusion."...”
• “Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial By Existence (1960)...”
• “Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have ...”
• “He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's say...”
• “We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the n...”
• “How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint...”
• “He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong vo...”
• “Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westwa...”
• “I always have felt strange when we came home To the dark house after so long an absence, And the key rattled loudly into...”
• “Every artist must have two fears -- the fear of God and the fear of man -- fear of God that his creation will ultimately...”
• “I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there. God turned to...”
• “I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to s...”
• “Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subside...”
• “It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame...”