Robert Frost Quotes

We love the things we love for what they are.

~ Robert Frost

The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.

~ Robert Frost

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

~ Robert Frost

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?

~ 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

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

~ 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

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

~ 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, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

~ Robert Frost

For dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true

~ Robert Frost

They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.

~ Robert Frost

God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown,But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown.And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live,And said To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give.Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend,But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end.God's Garden

~ Robert Frost

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

~ Robert Frost

Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth's unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one.

~ Robert Frost

The Road Not TakenTwo 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

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

~ Robert Frost

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

~ Robert Frost

We ran as if to meet the moon.

~ 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

INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. I do not see why I should e’er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true.

~ Robert Frost

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

~ Robert Frost

I would not come in.I meant not even if asked,And I hadn't been.

~ Robert Frost

Fireflies in the GardenBy Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

~ Robert Frost

GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?

~ Robert Frost

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

~ Robert Frost

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64)

~ Robert Frost

I could give all to Time except -- exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would not part with I have kept.

~ Robert Frost

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

~ Robert Frost

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

~ Robert Frost

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.

~ Robert Frost

All thought is a feat of association.

~ Robert Frost

What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.

~ Robert Frost

The TelephoneWhen I was just as far as I could walkFrom here todayThere was an hourAll stillWhen leaning with my head against a flowerI heard you talk.Don't say I didn't for I heard you sayYou spoke from that flower on the window sill-Do you remember what it was you said ''First tell me what it was you thought you heard.''Having found the flower and driven a bee awayI leaned my headAnd holding by the stalkI listened and I thought I caught the wordWhat was itDid you call me by my name Or did you saySomeone said ComeI heard it as I bowed.''I may have thought as much but not aloud.'Well so I came.

~ Robert Frost

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

~ Robert Frost

Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart.

~ 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

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

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.How often already you've had to be told,Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.Dread fifty above more than fifty below.I have to be gone for a season or so.

~ Robert Frost