Robert Frost Quotes

“I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.”

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

“Democracy is the best chance for the best people.”

“Butterflies...flowers that fly and all but sing.”

“There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.”

“Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.”

“I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his key.And of course there must be something wrongIn wanting to silence any song.”

“Trust him to have his bitter politicsAgainst his unacquaintances the richWho sleep in houses of their own, though mortgaged.Conservatives, they don't know what to save.”

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

“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?”

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”

“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.”

“Writing a poem is discovering.”

“There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.”

“The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.”

“The only way out is to go through”

“We get twitted now and then on how we made this country. Well, we took the whole business, of course. It's not just that corner that we took from Mexico. When we got it all together, we got a very shapely country-the best continental cut in all the world, between the two oceans and in the right temperature zone.”

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

“For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew.”

“A man has got to keep his extrication.The important thing is not to get bogged downIn what he has to do to earn a living.”

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

“The rain to the wind said, You push and I'll pelt.' They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged--though not dead. I know how the flowers felt.”

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”

“But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:And now from having ridden out desireThey lie closed over in the wind and clingWhere wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.”

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”