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Robert Frost Quotes
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Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

✵ 24. March 1874 – 29. January 1963
Robert Frost photo
Robert Frost: 265   quotes 82   likes

Robert Frost Quotes

“The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.”

Robert Frost

" The Gift Outright http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/994.html" (1941)
1940s

People

“It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.”

Robert Frost

"Escapist — Never
1960s

Future

“I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.”

Robert Frost

You come too.
"The Pasture", st. 1 (1914)
General sources

Spring , Water , Waiting

“She drew back; he was calm
"It is this that had the power,"
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.”

Robert Frost

" The Subverted Flower http://www.andrews.edu/~spangles/life/poet/x.htm"
1940s

Flowers

“He said twice over before he knew himself:
"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?""Not you!'—'Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.'—
I don't know rightly whether any man can."”

Robert Frost

Home Burial (1915)

“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

" Goodbye and Keep Cold http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/good-bye-and-keep-cold-2/" (1923)
1920s

Season

“Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.”

Robert Frost

"The Gift Outright" (1941)
1940s

War

“I shall set forth for somewhere,
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

"The Sound of the Trees" (1920)
1920s

“Let me be the one
To do what is done.”

Robert Frost

Ten Mills : Assertive
1920s, Further Range (1926)

“The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.”

Robert Frost

Mowing http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section1.rhtml
1910s

Dreams

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”

Robert Frost

" Education by Poetry http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/edbypo.html", speech delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly (February 1931)
1930s

People , Way , Thinking

“Deliver us from committees.”

Robert Frost A Masque of Reason

"A Masque of Reason
1940s

“Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.”

Robert Frost

1910s, My November Guest (1915)

Love , Learning

“Take care to sell your horse before he dies.
The art of life is passing losses on.”

Robert Frost

"The Ingenuities of Debt
1940s

Life , Art , Loss , Horse

“The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.”

Robert Frost

" The Ax-Helve http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ax-helve-the/" (1923)
1920s

Evil

“She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease.”

Robert Frost

" The Silken Tent http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-silken-tent/" (1942)
1940s

Guy , Summer

“Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.”

Robert Frost

For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration also known as Dedictation (1960)
1960s, Dedication (1960)

Courage

“Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.”

Robert Frost

"After Apple Picking
1910s

Sleep

“The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.”

Robert Frost

1910s, Home Burial (1914)

People

“It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height.
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may take something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.”

Robert Frost

"Take Something Like a Star" (1949)
1940s

Star , Time

“Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.”

Robert Frost

1920s, A Peck of Gold (1926)

Children , Sea

“"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.”

Robert Frost

1960s, Dedication (1960)

Love , Age , Feeling , Courage

“But he sent her Good-by,
And said to be good,
And wear her red hood,
And look for skunk tracks
In the snow with an ax —
And do everything!”

Robert Frost

"The Last Word of a Blue Bird
1910s

“People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that’s us.”

Robert Frost

"London Observer (29 March 1959)
1950s

People

“If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes
Will keep my talk from getting overwise,
I'm not the one for putting off the proof.
Let it be overwhelming, off a roof
And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust,
And blind me to a standstill if it must.”

Robert Frost

Dust in the Eyes http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dust-in-the-eyes/ (1928)
1920s

“How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.”

Robert Frost

Lives of the Poets : The Story of One Thousand Years of English and American Poetry (1959) by Louis Untermeyer
1950s

Nature , Time

“The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.”

Robert Frost

1910s, My November Guest (1915)

Beauty , Thinking , Tree

“Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.”

Robert Frost

"A Girl's Garden
1910s

“The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.”

Robert Frost

" Out, Out — http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/out-out-2/"
1910s

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.”

Robert Frost

" Two Tramps in Mud-Time http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1934oct06-00156", first published in The Saturday Review of Literature, 6 October 1934, st. 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=AmggAQAAMAAJ&q=%22The+sun+was+warm+but+the+wind+was+chill+You+know+how+it+is+with+an+April+day+When+the+sun+is+out+and+the+wind+is+still+You're+one+month+on+in+the+middle+of+May+But+if+you+so+much+as+dare+to+speak+A+cloud+comes+over+the+sunlit+arch+A+wind+comes+off+a+frozen+peak+And+you're+two+months+back+in+the+middle+of+March%22&pg=PA156#v=onepage
1930s

Sun

“Have I not walked without an upward look
Of caution under stars that very well
Might not have missed me when they shot and fell?
It was a risk I had to take — and took.”

Robert Frost

"Bravado" (1947)
1940s

Star

“Do you know,
Considering the market, there are more
Poems produced than any other thing?
No wonder poets sometimes have to seem
So much more businesslike than businessmen.
Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.”

Robert Frost New Hampshire

"New Hampshire" (1923)
1920s

“"Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.”

Robert Frost

"Out, Out —"
1910s

Sister

“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.”

Robert Frost To Earthward

"To Earthward" (1923), st. 5,6
General sources

Love , Pain , Tear , Joy

“Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air”

Robert Frost

" To Earthward http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-earthward-2/", st. 1 (1923)
1920s

Wedding , Love

“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.”

Robert Frost

The Star-Splitter
1920s

People , Forgiveness

“And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.”

Robert Frost

"The Death of the Hired Man" (1914)
1910s
Variant: And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.

Hope

“The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
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

"Home Burial" (1914)
1910s

Life , Death , People , Way

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”

Robert Frost

1910s, Mending Wall (1914)

Love , Sun

“My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."”

Robert Frost

1910s, Mending Wall (1914)

Tree

“A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic.”

Robert Frost

Preface to A Way Out : A One-act Play (1929)
1920s

Nature

“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”

Robert Frost

"Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
1940s

Bird

“There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.”

Robert Frost

" Mowing http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mowing-2/"
1910s

“And be all plunderers curst.
'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,
Of unsatisfied love of display,
Of unsatisfied love of the high,
Unvulgar, unsoiled, and ideal.
Let their trappings be taken away.
Let them suffer starvation and die
Of being brought down to the real.”

Robert Frost

"The Vindictives"
1920s, Further Range (1926)

Love , Hate , Way , Suffering

“To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.”

Robert Frost

" The Wood-Pile http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wood-pile-the/"
1910s

“But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.”

Robert Frost

"The Silken Tent" (1942)
1940s

Love , Summer

“The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;
New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.”

Robert Frost New Hampshire

"New Hampshire" (1923)
1920s

Mountain

“And then we saw him bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray,
Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.”

Robert Frost

" The Runaway http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/runaway-the/" (1923)
1920s

“I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.”

Robert Frost

" The Fear http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fear-the/"
1910s

Home , Housing

“Such was life in the Golden Gate:
Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
And I was one of the children told,
'We all must eat our peck of gold.”

Robert Frost

A Peck of Gold (1926)

Life , Children