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Robert Frost
170 quotes
“Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud — It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us that we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says "I burn.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Afterword" ("Choose Something Like a Star"), l. 1. Come In, and Other Poems (1943) p. 192
“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 (1874–1963) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Afterword" ("Choose Something Like a Star"), l. 20 (1943)
“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 (1874–1963) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Masque of Reason (1945)
“Deliver us from committees.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Masque of Reason (1945)
“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Norman Lockridge (ed.) World's Wit and Wisdom (New York: Baltimore Publishing Co, 1945) p. 348, no. 3512
“Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Masque of Mercy (1947)
“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 (1874–1963) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Gift Outright", originally recited it at the College of William & Mary in 1941; first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 1942)
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Twas Age imposed on poems Their gather-roses burden To warn against the danger That overtaken lovers From being overflooded With happiness should have it And yet not know they have it.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They've tried to grasp with too much social fact Too large a situation. You and I Would be afraid if we should comprehend And get outside of too much bad statistics, Our muscles never could again contract: We never could recover human shape, But must live lives out mentally agape Or die of philosophical distention. That's how we feel — and we're no special mystics.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can't appraise the time in which we act. But for the folly of it, let's pretend We know enough to know it for adverse.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I may have wept that any should have died Or missed their chance, or not have been their best, Or been their riches, fame, or love denied; On me as much as any is the jest. I take my incompleteness with the rest. God bless himself can no one else be blessed. I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori. And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stopped my song and almost heart, For any eye is an evil eye That looks in onto a mood apart.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry – Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there's a story in a book about it.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you're lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up to all but me.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First there's the children's house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny's A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it, So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't. (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are all probably taking literature classes in which the professors teach how to get behind authors' words to determine their deeper meanings. In my case, they teach that the crow shaking snow from a hemlock tree means that evil, black, stands in contrast to the pure white good of the snow around it, like in life. They are wrong. I saw the crow, and the tree, and the snow. It was beautiful. I stopped to enjoy it. Period.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As recalled from a 1955 conversation by Stephen N. Miller. Published as a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal (March 7, 2025)
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957) by Sydney Cox in Vermont History, vol. 25 (1957), p. 355
“A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BBC Interview with Cecil Day Lewis (13 September 1957); transcripts published in "It Takes a Hero to Make a Poem" in the Claremont Quarterly (Spring 1958)
“People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that's us.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the London Observer (March 29, 1959) "Sayings of the Week
“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 (1874–1963) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Louis Untermeyer, Lives of the Poets: The Story of One Thousand Years of English and American Poetry (1959)
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed in Ray Josephs, "Robert Frost's Secret", in William Nichols (ed.) Words to Live By (Simon and Schuster, 1959), pp. 172–73. Also in Robert I. Fitzhenry (ed.) The Harper Book of Quotations (1993), p. 261, and i…
“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.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in the Monroe Morning World (August 7, 1960) p. 3-C
“Asked...whether he would define poetry as "escape" he answered hardily: "No. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Elizabeth S. Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence (1960), Ch. 18
“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Frost in Harvey Shapiro "Story of the Poem", The New York Times (January 15, 1961), sec. SM, p. 6; and in Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), p. 208. A…
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Lawrence Thompson, Fire and Ice: The Art and Thought of Robert Frost (1961)
“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 (1874–1963) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Vogue (March 14, 1963)
“The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in TIME magazine (September 20, 1963) p. 102
“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.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Writers at Work (1963)
“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 (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Louis Untermeyer, Robert Frost: A Backward Look (1964), p. 18
“Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. This verse that in acknowledgement I bring Goes back to the beginning of the end Of what had been for centuries the trend; A turning point in modern history.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?)”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attempts at sovereignty and form. They are our wards we think to some extent For the time being and with their consent, To teach them how Democracy is meant.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source