“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261
General sources
Variant: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
Dedication (1960)
Context: There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right divine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
“Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.”
Dedication (1960)
Context: Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
“Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.”
"The Black Cottage" (1914)
1910s
“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
As quoted in Robert Frost: the Trial by Existence (1960) by Elizabeth S. Sergeant, Ch. 18
1960s
Variant: Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
“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.
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.
“Take care to sell your horse before he dies.
The art of life is passing losses on.”
"The Ingenuities of Debt
1940s
"Home Burial" (1914)
1910s
"The Master Speed"; the last line is Inscribed beneath his wife's name on the gravestone of Frost and his wife, Elinor
1930s
As quoted in Bartlett's Book of Love Quotations (1994)
Undated