Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Robert Frost

170 quotes

• “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 (1874–1963) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Preface to A Way Out: A One-act Play (1929)

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood?”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: First published in The Yale Review (October 1923)

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Written in June 1922

• “My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there. God turned to speak to me (Don't anybody laugh) God found I wasn't there At least not over half.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Written in 1926

• “All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really gold.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Education by Poetry", speech delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates' Quarterly (February 1931)

• “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Address at Milton Academy, Massachusetts (May 17, 1935)

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial By Existence (1960), p. 351, and William Richard Evans, Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (1981),…

• “When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. ... You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Originally delivered at a poetry reading at Princeton University (October 26, 1937), published in Collected Poems, Prose & Plays (1995)

• “You see the beauty of my proposal is It needn’t wait on general revolution. I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Build Soil", first recited on May 31, 1932, at Columbia University. Inspired by Virgil's First Eclogue (poets.org)

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Build Soil" (1932)

• “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 (1874–1963) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Two Tramps in Mud-Time", st. 3; first published in The Saturday Review of Literature (October 6, 1934) [http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1934oct06-00156

• “But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For heaven and the future´s sakes.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Two Tramps in Mud Time", st. 9 (1936)

• “The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be — The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave, But carries no cry of what is hoped to be. There may be little or much beyond the grave, But the strong are saying nothing until they see.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Who said it mattered What monkeys did or didn't understand? They might not understand the burning-glass. They might not understand the sun itself. It's knowing what to do with things that counts.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.”

  Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

More