Robert Frost was a prolific American poet who wrote over 1,000 poems in his lifetime. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.
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| In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. ― Robert Frost |
Robert Frost quotes are a valuable source of wisdom and insight. Frost quotes continue to be popular today because they are both thought-provoking and inspiring.
They offer us insights into the human condition, the nature of life and death, and the beauty of the natural world and remind us of the importance of choice, perseverance, and self-discovery.
If you are looking for a quote that will inspire you or make you think, I encourage you to read some of Robert Frost quotes. You may be surprised at how much you find to relate to.
Here are some of Robert Frost most famous quotes: Robert Frost quotes about life, poetry, poem, nature, freedom, home, reading, education, writing and love.
Robert Frost Quotes and Sayings
We love the things we love for what they are.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
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.
I always entertain great hopes.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.
Freedom lies in being bold.
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| We love the things we love for what they are. ― Robert Frost |
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
The best way out is always through.
The only certain freedom's in departure.
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.
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
Education is hanging around until you've caught on.
Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
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| The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. ― Robert Frost |
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.
No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.
You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.
The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.
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.
The artist in me cries out for design.
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
Humor is the most engaging cowardice.
How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?
The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean - Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.
If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
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| Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ― Robert Frost |
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.
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.
Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
College is a refuge from hasty judgment.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.
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.
The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
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 if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man—one man—can't fill a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It's thus he does it of a winter night.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.
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| 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 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.
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
I believe in teaching, but I don't believe in going to school.
The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that's the worst place to drive.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.
I go to school the youth to learn the future.
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.
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 best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
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| Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. ― Robert Frost |
My goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation, as my two eyes make one in sight.
I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.
Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body—the wishbone.
Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.
Anything more than the truth would be too much.
You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.
When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.
Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent.
For dear me, why abandon a belief, merely because it ceases to be true.
Our very life depends on everything's recurring til we answer from within.
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| Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. ― Robert Frost |
What is done is done for the love of it - or not really done at all.
Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.
Good fences make good neighbors.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
What we live by we die by.
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.
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.
To be social is to be forgiving.
I am one who has been acquainted with the night.
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
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.
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| Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ― Robert Frost |
Hope is not found in a way out but a way through.
Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.
The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length.
A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look.
I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
So I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.
The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart, in that vanished abode there far apart.
Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.
Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.
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| 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 |
Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever truly done, for Heaven and the future's sakes.
Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
Heaven gives its glimpses only to those. Not in position to look too close.
Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile and then come back to it and begin over.
To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful.
They would not find me changed from him they knew — only more sure of all I thought was true.
He will not go behind his father's saying, and he likes having thought of it so well, he says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.
If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.
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.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips for a shelter for the night.
I only hope that when I am free, as they are free to go in quest, of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, it may not seem better to me to rest.
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| A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. ― Robert Frost |
Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.
A man must partly give up being a man With women-folk.
My definition of literature would be just this: words that have become deeds.
Lovers, forget your love, and list the love of these, she a window flower, and he a winter breeze.
Working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come, where the boughs rain when it blows.
An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.
Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only and the shade of trees.
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.
They are that that talks of going, but never gets away; and that talks no less for knowing, as it grows wiser and older, that now it means to stay.
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.
Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.
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.
All thought is a feat of association.
Grievances are a form of impatience. Griefs are a form of patience.
All nature seems to weave a circle of. Enchantment round the mind, and give full sway. To flitting thoughts and dreams of bygone years.
Holding the curve of one position, counting an endless repetition.
We shall be known by the delicacy of where we stop short.
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.'
Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.
All the fun's in how you say a thing.
You can't get too much winter in the winter.
Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.
Now no joy but lacks salt, that is not dashed with pain, and weariness and fault; i crave the stain. Of tears, the aftermark. Of almost too much love, the sweet of bitter bark, and burning clove.
No wonder poets sometimes have to seem. So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.
I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway. I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
The realist always falls in love with a girl he has grown up with, the romanticist with a girl from 'off somewhere.'
The ear is the only writer and the only true reader.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends the frozen ground swell under it.
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood. Throws down in front of us is not to bar. Our passage to our journey's end for good, but just to ask us who we think we are.
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