“Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.”
Variant: Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
Robert Frost:
265
quotes
82
likes
Robert Frost Quotes
“I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.”
" Come In http://plagiarist.com/poetry/691" (1942), st. 4, 5
General sources
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost
Context: p>Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.</p
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
Address at Milton Academy, Massachusetts (17 May 1935)
1930s
Variant: Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
" Once by the Pacific http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/once-by-the-pacific-2/" (1928)
General sources
Context: You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
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.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.
Source: Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949
“A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.”
BBC Interview with Cecil Day Lewis (13 September 1957); transcripts published in "It Takes a Hero to Make a Poem" in the Claremont Quarterly (Spring 1958) http://www.frostfriends.org/FFL/Periodicals/Interview-lewis.html
1950s
"A Servant to Servants" (1914)
General sources
Variant: The best way out is always through.
Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Robert Frost : The Trial By Existence (1960) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, p. 351, and Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (1981) by William Richard Evans, p. 223
General sources
Context: 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. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.
“Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
"Birches" (1920)
General sources
Source: Swinger of Birches
Context: I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully 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.
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”
"Fire and Ice" (1923)
General sources
Context: 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.
"Two Tramps in Mud Time" (1936), st. 9
General sources
“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
Source: Collected Poems of Robert Frost
“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
General sources
Source: "Birches" (1920)
Context: I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Variant: The rain to the wind said,
You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost
“Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.”
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost
"Neither Out Far nor In Deep
1930s
St. 2
1920s, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)
1960s, Dedication (1960)
St. 3
1920s, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)
A Servant To Servants (1914)
1910s
"For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration" (1960), the poem is also known as "Dedication". Frost had planned to read "For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration" at John F. Kennedy's imauguration, but the blinding light from the sun and snow prompted him to recite "The Gift Outright" from memory. Source: Tuten, Nancy Lewis; Zubizarreta, John (2001). The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 9780313294648
General sources
Variant: Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
" The Cow in Apple-Time http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cow-in-apple-time-the/"
1910s
1910s, Home Burial (1914)
