Robert Frost Quotes

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself. How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you? Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. Poetry is what gets lost in translation. 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. Freedom lies in being bold. I am not a teacher, but an awakener. I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed. Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane. The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. The best way out is always through. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. We love the things we love for what they are. A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. We dance round in a ring and suppose but the Secret sits in the middle and knows. The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. 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. The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves. We ran as if to meet the moon. How many things would you attempt If you knew you could not fail. 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. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out. 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. 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. I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school. By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do. 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. The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive. 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. Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting. Anything more than the truth would be too much. Good fences make good neighbors. What we live by we die by A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world. You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference. A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity. 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. Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. 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... 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. My goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation, as my two eyes make one in sight. 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. Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard. The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

Robert Frost

1874 - 1963