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) American poet
“Haec Fabula Docet” (1947)
Quotations by:
Frost, Robert
The best way out is always through.
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) American poet
“Build Soil” (1932)
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) American poet
“Fire and Ice” (1923)
The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
We love the things we love for what they are.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“In the Clearing” (1962)
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“Mending Wall” (1914)
Good fences make good neighbors.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“Mending Wall” (1914)
(Source)
The narrator's neighbor speaking. The phrase predates Frost (and has analogs in many languages and cultures), but achieved additional currency by his use.
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) American poet
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” st. 4 (1923)Full text.
You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular. One’s a Republican, one’s a Democrat. The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“The Art of Poetry No. 2,” interview by R.Poirier, Paris Review #24 (Summer-Fall 1960)Full text.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“The Figure a Poem Makes,” Collected Poems, Preface, “The Figure a Poem Makes” (1939)
(Source)
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) American poet
“The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942)
Initially read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard (20 Jun 1941)
No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have a speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will.
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still—
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with 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) American poet
“The Master Speed” (1934)
(Source)
Collected in A Further Range (1937). Frost wrote the poem for his daughter's wedding, and the final line is the epitaph on his wife's portion of their gravestone.
It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound — that he will never get over it.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“The Poetry of Amy Lowell,” The Christian Science Monitor (16 May 1925)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The old dog barks backward without getting up;
I can remember when he was a pup.
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.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“The Vindictives”
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.
Anyone with an active mind lives on tentatives rather than tenets.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
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.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)Quoted in Vogue (15 Mar 1963)
There are two types of realist. There is the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)Quoted in Holt, Robert Frost: The Man and His Work (1923)
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) American poet
(Attributed)
I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)Quoted in the Wall Street Journal (5 Aug 1969)
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) American poet
(Attributed)Quoted in Vogue (15 Mar 1963)
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
A Further Range, “Ten Mills,” “Precaution” (1936)
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew.
– Writing a poem is discovering.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
New York Times (7 Nov 1955)
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) American poet
Vogue (15 Mar 1963)
Families break up when people take hints you don’t intend and miss hints you do intend.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Writers at Work: Second Series, Interview with Richard Poirier (1963)
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Address at Milton Academy, Massachusetts (17 May 1935)
In a 1966 interview with Edward Lanthem, Frost restated the metaphor: "I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down."
You’ve been broadened and enlarged [by college] to where you can listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Commencement Address, Dartmouth (Jun 1955)
Full text.Commonly quoted: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
We’re like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made the father such a man.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Comment, “Meet the Press” (22 Mar 1959)
When asked by Ernest Lindley whether American civilization had improved or declined in his lifetime. Often misquoted as "Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich."
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Poem title (1942)
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
Speech, Berkeley, California (1935)