Robert Frost: Going

Robert Frost was American poet. Explore interesting quotes on going.
Robert Frost: 530   quotes 82   likes

“I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”

Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621
Variant: And miles to go before I sleep.
Context: 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.

Deep , Good Night , Sleep

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

Robert Frost

"The Death of the Hired Man" (1914)
1910s

Peaceful , Home

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”

Robert Frost

Variant: I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Way , Hell

“If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.”

Robert Frost

“I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.”

Robert Frost

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.

Personality

“Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?”

Robert Frost

"Reluctance", st. 4 (1913)
1910s

Love , Heart , Season

“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.”

Robert Frost

As quoted in Vogue (14 March 1963)
1960s
Variant: 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.

Life , Way

“The mind-is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind-
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.”

Robert Frost
Sleep , Learning , Heart , Night

“Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

Robert Frost

"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.

Love

“It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with you — and you with me —
Because we’re — we’re — I don’t know
What we are.”

Robert Frost

"West-running Brook
1920s

Way

“'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.”

Robert Frost

1910s, Home Burial (1914)

Death , Thinking , Time

“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

“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

“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

“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.”

Robert Frost

"A-Wishing Well" (1962)
1960s

World

“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!”

Robert Frost

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

Friendship , Star , Memory

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

Robert Frost

"Haec Fabula Docet" (1947)
1940s

“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)

Sleep , Love , Making love