Robert Frost Quotes & Sayings

For dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true — Robert Frost

Freedom is when you are easy in the harness. — Robert Frost

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate. — Robert Frost

He never got up high enough to see.
That's why I don't advise your trying this side.
He tried this side. I've always meant to go
And look myself, but you know how it is:
It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain
You've worked around the foot of all your life. — Robert Frost

THE FIGURE A POEM MAKES
No one can really hold that ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends 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. — Robert Frost

The truly educated can listen to any view without losing their temper or self-confidence. — 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

He says the best way out is always through. / And I can agree to that, or in so far / As that I can see no way out but through — 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

If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. Neither one alone without the other under it will do. — Robert Frost

I play better tennis because the court is there. — Robert Frost

I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone. — Robert Frost

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. — Robert Frost

Leaves and bark, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood. — Robert Frost

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases ... but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book. — Robert Frost

I own I never really warmed
To the reformer or reformed.
And yet conversion has its place
Not halfway down the scale of grace. — Robert Frost

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy. — Robert Frost

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader. — Robert Frost

-No, this is no begining.
-Then an end?
-End is a gloomy word. — Robert Frost

The realist always falls in love with a girl he has grown up with, the romanticist with a girl from 'off somewhere. — Robert Frost

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song. — Robert Frost

I am not a teacher, but an awakener. — Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both ... — Robert Frost

In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng ... — Robert Frost

Far more violence has been done in obeying the law than in breaking the law. — 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

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. — Robert Frost

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

My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds. — Robert Frost

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense. — Robert Frost

It comes down to a doubt about the wisdom
Of having children after having had them,
So there is nothing we can do about it
But warn the children they perhaps should have none. — Robert Frost

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear. — Robert Frost

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

There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go slow. — Robert Frost

The only certain freedom's in departure. — Robert Frost

We saw the risk we took in doing good, But dared not spare to do the best we could — Robert Frost

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward. — Robert Frost

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 society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom. — Robert Frost

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. — Robert Frost

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second. — Robert Frost

You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference. — Robert Frost

A champion of the workingman has never been known to die of overwork. — Robert Frost

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love. — Robert Frost

I am not a teacher. I am an awakener. — Robert Frost

The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week. — Robert Frost

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

I came from a very intellectual neighborhood. When we played cowboys and Indians as kids, I had to be Gandhi. — Robert Frost

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed. — Robert Frost

Start with a big fat lump in your throat. Start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, a crazy lovesickness, and run with it. If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love. And don't stop until you get what you love. — Robert Frost

I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed. — Robert Frost

Anything more than the truth would be too much. — Robert Frost

Any eye is an evil eye That looks in on to a mood apart. — Robert Frost

Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came-
If anyone remembers how that was
I have a theory, but it hardly does. — Robert Frost

Don't be agnostic - be something. — Robert Frost

States strong enough to do good are but few.
Their number would seem limited to three. — Robert Frost

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football. — Robert Frost

Create and stir other people to create. — 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

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

There are no two things as important to us in life and in art as being threatened and being saved. What are ideals of form for if we aren't going to be made to fear for them? All our ingenuity is lavished on getting into danger legitimately so that we may be genuinely rescued. — Robert Frost

Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting. — Robert Frost

Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting. — Robert Frost

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space. — 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

Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30. — Robert Frost

But what would interest you about the brook,
It's always cold in summer, warm in winter. — Robert Frost

And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's-and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three-the three great things. — Robert Frost

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense. — Robert Frost

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself. — Robert Frost

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

Our very life depends on everything's
Recurring till we answer from within.
The thousandth time may prove the charm. — Robert Frost

Yes, and even for the past ... that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something I can accept. Mistakes made by the self I had to be or was not able to be. — Robert Frost

The problem for the King is just how strict
The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law
And discipline should be in school and state ... — 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

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past. — Robert Frost

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

Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain. — Robert Frost

The only way round is through. — Robert Frost

College is a refuge from hasty judgment. — Robert Frost

The people I am most afraid of are those who are the most afraid. — Robert Frost

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden. — Robert Frost

I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway. I'd rather you'd not go unless you must. — Robert Frost

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. — Robert Frost

Let me be the one To do what is done. — Robert Frost

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family- But not much in between unless a college. — Robert Frost

The best way to hate is the worst.
'Tis to find what the hated need,
Never mind of what actual worth,
And wipe that out of the earth.
Let them die of unsatisfied greed ... — Robert Frost

The middle of the road is where the white line is - and that's the worst place to drive. — Robert Frost

The sister's face
Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.
She wanted to do right. She'd have to think. — Robert Frost

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you? — Robert Frost

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything. — Robert Frost

You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. — Robert Frost

Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand. — Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. — Robert Frost

My woods...the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires. — Robert Frost

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. — Robert Frost

Democracy is the best chance for the best people. — Robert Frost

We ran as if to meet the moon. — 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

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. — Robert Frost