Robert Frost Quotes

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

Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.

~ Robert Frost

But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing— Too present to imagine.

~ Robert Frost

For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.As I sit here, and often times, I wishI could be monarch of a desert landI could devote and dedicate foreverTo the truths we keep coming back and back to.––from The Black Cottage

~ Robert Frost

They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars—on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.

~ Robert Frost

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.

~ Robert Frost

He moves in darkness as it seems to meNot of woods only and the shade of trees.

~ Robert Frost

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?

~ Robert Frost

The mind-is not the heart.I may yet live, as I know others live,To wish in vain to let go with the mind-Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells meThat I need learn to let go with the heart.

~ Robert Frost

The best way out is always through.

~ Robert Frost

Lovers, forget your love,And list the love of these,She a window flower,And he a winter breeze.

~ Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his keys.And of course there must be something wrongIn waiting to silence any song.

~ Robert Frost

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

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

~ Robert Frost

The farm is a base of operations–a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development. I think a person has to be withdrawn into himself to gather inspiration so that he is somebody when he comes out again among folks–when he “comes to market’ with himself. He learns that he’s got to be almost wastefully alone.

~ Robert Frost

It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage...

~ Robert Frost

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

~ Robert Frost

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

~ Robert Frost

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

~ Robert Frost

I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great

~ Robert Frost

Fire and IceSome say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

~ Robert Frost

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

~ Robert Frost

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

~ Robert Frost

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

~ Robert Frost

Part of a moon was falling down the west,Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.Its light poured softly in her lap. She sawAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong the harp-like morning-glory strings,Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,As if she played unheard the tendernessThat wrought on him beside her in the night.

~ Robert Frost

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

~ Robert Frost

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.

~ Robert Frost

The only way round is through.

~ Robert Frost

I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

~ Robert Frost

Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.

~ Robert Frost

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

~ Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less travelled by And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost

Belief is better than anything else and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever.

~ Robert Frost

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

~ Robert Frost

There may be little or much beyond the grave But the strong are saying nothing until they see.

~ Robert Frost

At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.

~ 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

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

~ Robert Frost

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

~ Robert Frost

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

~ Robert Frost