Robert Frost Quotes
page 5

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 quotes84 likes

Robert Frost Quotes

“The old dog barks backward without getting up;
I can remember when he was a pup.”

" The Span of Life http://members.tripod.com/~AMDB7/poems/thespanoflife.html" (1936) <br class="br">1930s

“Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.”

1960s, Dedication (1960)

“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular…. The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.”

Interview in Writers at Work (1963)
1960s

“Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)”

1960s, Dedication (1960)

“The Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow.”

"Hyla Brook" (1920)
1920s

“We disparage reason.
But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”

Robert Frost A Masque of Reason

"A Masque of Reason
1940s

“If this uncertain age in which we dwell
Were really as dark as I hear sages tell,
And I convinced that they were really sages,
I should not curse myself with it to hell”

1940s, The Lesson for Today (1942)

“God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.”

1960s, Dedication (1960)

“I am assured at any rate
Man's practically inexterminate.
Someday I must go into that.
There's always been an Ararat
Where someone someone else begat
To start the world all over at.”

"A-Wishing Well" (1962)
1960s

“You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.”

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost: A Backward Look, by Louis Untermeyer (1964), p. 18
1960s

“No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!”

" Provide, Provide http://plagiarist.com/poetry/732/" (1936), st. 6 - 7 <br class="br">General sources

“She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."”

1910s, Home Burial (1914)

“Unless I'm wrong
I but obey
The urge of a song:
I'm—bound—away!

And I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.”

"Away!" (1962), st. 5,6
General sources

“Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.”

"The Hardship of Accounting
1930s

“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.”

"Build Soil" (1932)
1930s

“My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.”

" After Apple Picking http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/after-apple-picking-3/" <br class="br">1910s

“It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.”

"It Takes All Sorts" (1962)
1960s

“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.”

" Tree at My Window http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tree-at-my-window-2/" (1928) <br class="br">1920s

“The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.”

" The Bear http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bear-the/" <br class="br">1920s

“All those who try to go it sole alone,
Too proud to be beholden for relief,
Are absolutely sure to come to grief.”

"Haec Fabula Docet" (1947)
1940s

“Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.”

"The Self-seeker" (1914)
1910s

“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.”

"West-running Brook
1920s

“All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.”

" An Old Man's Winter Night http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-old-man-s-winter-night-2/" <br class="br">1960s

“That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.”

"Tree at My Window" (1928)
1920s

“The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.”

" The Need of Being Versed in Country Things http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/need-of-being-versed-in-country-things-the/" <br class="br">1920s

““Well, who begun it?”
That’s what at the end of a war
We always say not who won it,
Or what it was foughten for.”

"Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success
1960s

“I stopped my song and almost heart,
For any eye is an evil eye
That looks in onto a mood apart.”

" A Mood Apart http://www.cod.edu/dept/kiesback/lizkies/frost.htm#mood" (1947) <br class="br">1940s

“Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.”

1910s, My November Guest (1915)

“Till we came to be
There was not a trace
Of a thinking race
Anywhere in space.”

"Kitty Hawk
1960s

“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.”

"The Master Speed"; the last line is Inscribed beneath his wife's name on the gravestone of Frost and his wife, Elinor
1930s

“Courage is of the heart by derivation,
And great it is. But fear is of the soul.”

A Masque of Mercy (1947)
1940s

“Hell is a half-filled auditorium. ”

“Well, who begun it?”

That’s what at the end of a war
We always say not who won it,
Or what it was foughten for.
"Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success
General sources

“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. <br class="br">" 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) <br class="br">General sources

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

St. 4
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

“'I can repeat the very words you were saying:
"Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build."”

Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
Home Burial (1915)

“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.”

As quoted in Bartlett's Book of Love Quotations (1994)
Undated

“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”

“Accept no one’s definition of you, define yourself.”

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting ... Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”

Source: 1930s, The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)

“He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
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 neighbours.””

Robert Frost Mending Wall

Source: 1910s, Mending Wall (1914)

“I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew —
Only more sure of all I thought was true.”

"Into My Own", st. 4 (1913)
General sources

“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.”

" Come In http://plagiarist.com/poetry/691" (1942), st. 4, 5 <br class="br">General sources

“As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.

Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.”

Directive (1947)

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