Top 484 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Frost - Page 5

Let's get my incantation right: "I wish I may, I wish I might" Give earth another satellite.

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.

There is much in nature against us. But we forget: Take nature altogether since time began, Including human nature, in peace and war, And it must be a little more in favor of man.

Lovers, forget your love And list to the love of these She a window flower And he a winter breeze.

Out alone in the winter rain, / Intent on giving and taking pain.

Only God and I knew what I meant when I wrote it, now only God knows

I heard someone say he [Carl Sandburg] was the kind of writer who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by being translated into another language.

I'm always saying something that's just the edge of something more.

Nature is always hinting at us.

Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.

You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.

I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago.

If you're looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

GATHERING LEAVES Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then? Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?

It's hard to get into this world and hard to get out of it, and what's in between doesn't make much sense.

I came from a very intellectual neighborhood. When we played cowboys and Indians as kids, I had to be Gandhi.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But not gold in commercial quantities, Just enough gold to make the engagement rings And marriage rings of those who owned the farm. What gold more innocent could one have asked for?

I have remained resentful to this day When any but myself presumed to say That there was anything I couldn't be.

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak.

I could give all to Time except--except What I myself have held.

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

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Skepticism, is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, Well, what have we here?

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

A champion of the workingman has never been known to die of overwork.

A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day.

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

When clever people ask me where I get a poem, I despair.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

One of the lies would make it out that nothing Ever presents itself before us twice. Where would we be at last if that were so? Our very life depends on everything's Recurring till we answer from within.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

My goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation, As my two eyes make one in sight.

Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.

I have miles to go before I sleep.

You can't trust God to be unmerciful. There you have the beginning of all wisdom.

Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in it nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth's unhonored things Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one.

'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?' I don't suppose the water's changed at all. You and I know enough to know it's warm Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. But all the fun's in how you say a thing.

I still say the only education worth anything is self-education.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

Word I was in my life alone, / Word I had no one left but God.

He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

The problem for the King is just how strict The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law And discipline should be in school and state.

I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day.

Man that is of woman born is apt to be as vain has his mother.

What makes a nation in the beginning is a good piece of geography.

He says the best way out is always through. / And I can agree to that, or in so far / As that I can see no way out but through

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.

... A nation has to take its natural course Of Progress round and round in circles From King to Mob to King to Mob to King Until the eddy of it eddies out.

We cannot tell some people what it is believe, partly because they are too stupid to understand, partly because we are too proudly vague to explain.

If the day ever comes when they know who They are, they may know better where they are.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

The only way out is to go through

Men work together, whether they work together or apart.