Top 484 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Frost - Page 8

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. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.

Our very life depends on everything's Recurring till we answer from within.

Of course there is matter for remark in poems. Nobody denies that. But it must be solemnly laid on everybody in this world to make his own observations and remarks. That's what we mean by thinking, and that's about all we mean. A teacher says to a pupil "Watch me notice a few things in the next few months: let's see you notice a few things too."

The Armful For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load.

When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold.

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate wilfully 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.

In heaven we are all ghostwriters, if we write at all.

The truth is the river flows into the canyon Of Ceasing-to-Question-What-Doesn't-Concern-Us, As sooner or later we have to cease somewhere.

Ants are a curious race

My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds.

I never feel more at home than at a ballgame.

One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.

The people I want to hear about are the people who take risks.

Bounds should be set To ingenuity for being so cruel In bringing change unheralded on the unready.

For I have had too much Of apple-picking:I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired.

The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length

Yes, and even for the past...that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something I can accept. Mistakes made by the self I had to be or was not able to be.

I only hope that when I am free, as they are free to go in quest, of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, it may not seem better to me to rest.

Fireflies in the Garden By Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.

I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart

Both T.S. Eliot and I like to play, but I like to play euchre, while he likes to play Eucharist.

But what would interest you about the brook, It's always cold in summer, warm in winter.

Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul.

Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.

I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.

People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.

Fortunately, we don't need to know how bad an age is. There is something we can always be doing without reference to how good or bad the age is.

I cut my own hair. I got sick of barbers because they talk too much. And too much of their talk was about my hair coming out.

Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes Is the deed ever truly done For Heaven and the future's sakes

The Moon for all her light and grace Has never learned to know her place.

I own I never really warmed To the reformer or reformed. And yet conversion has its place Not halfway down the scale of grace.

Affection is an overpowering craving to be compellingly sought.

I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.

Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspectthey 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.

The footpath down to the well is healed.

One age is like another for the soul.

The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.

God once declared He was true And then took the veil and withdrew.

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.

Memento mori and obey the Lord. Art and religion love the somber chord.

I am one who has been acquainted with the night

A bird half wakened in the lunar noon Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be.

What an exciting age it is we live in With all this talk about the hope of youth And nothing made of youth.

Summary riposte To the dreary wail There's no knowing what Love is all about. Poets know a lot.

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden "A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness...It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Nations like the Cuban and the Swiss Can never hope to wage a Global Mission. No Holy Wars for them. The most the small Can ever give us is a nuisance brawl.

An idea is a feat of association.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors.

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.

Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow.

A turning point in modern history.