Robert Frost was an American poet born on March 26, 1874. He sold his first poem in 1894 for $15 called My Butterfly: An Elegy. He was an exceptional poet with a talent for depicting rural life using American colloquial speech. Frost’s work was appreciated, but he wasn’t paid well for his poetry. He had to work odd jobs to support himself and his family.
At 47, he accepted a position at Bread Load of English, Middlebury College, for summer teaching. This was the stable job he had for the rest of his life. Robert Frost contributed to the writing and development program of the school for 42 years and influenced many souls. He was also the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes.
Timeless Robert Frost Quotes
1. “A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.” – Robert Frost
2. “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” – Robert Frost
3. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” – Robert Frost
4. “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” – Robert Frost
5. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, homesickness, lovesickness.” – Robert Frost
6. “Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.” – Robert Frost
7. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost
8. “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
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9. “Freedom lies in being bold.” – Robert Frost
10. “What we live by we die by.” – Robert Frost
11. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” – Robert Frost
12. “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost
13. “Education doesn’t change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.” – Robert Frost
14. “Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on. – Robert Frost
Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.” – Robert Frost
15. “I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.” – Robert Frost
16. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” – Robert Frost
17. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” – Robert Frost
18. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” – Robert Frost
19. “We love things, we love what they are.” – Robert Frost
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20. “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
21. “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fills you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.” – Robert Frost
22. “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
23. “There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.” – Robert Frost
24. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost
25. “Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.” – Robert Frost
26. “Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.” – Robert Frost
27. “I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” – Robert Frost
28. “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.” – Robert Frost
29. “A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.” – Robert Frost
30. “You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.” – Robert Frost
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31. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” – Robert Frost
32. “My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.” – Robert Frost
33. “The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.” – Robert Frost
34. “Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.” – Robert Frost
35. “If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long
To get so, we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.” – Robert Frost
36. “Poetry is about grief. Politics is about grievance.” – Robert Frost
37. “Humor is the most engaging cowardice.” – Robert Frost
38. “You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.” – Robert Frost
39. “I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” – Robert Frost
40. “One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house.” – Robert Frost
41. “The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.” – Robert Frost
42. “A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.” – Robert Frost
43. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” – Robert Frost
44. “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” – Robert Frost
45. “If you don’t know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia.” – Robert Frost
46. “The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.” – Robert Frost
47. “I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.” – Robert Frost
48. “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
49. “You can’t get too much winter in the winter.” – Robert Frost
50. “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
51. “Hell is a half-filled auditorium.” – Robert Frost
52. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.” – Robert Frost
53. “It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.” – Robert Frost
54. “The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.” – Robert Frost
55. “Two roads diverged in a wood and me – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost
56. “I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.” – Robert Frost
57. “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” – Robert Frost
58. “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” – Robert Frost
59. “Two such as you with such 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
60. “We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” – Robert Frost
61. “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” – Robert Frost
Robert Frost Interview + Poetry Reading (1952)
Featuring Robert Frost at his home in Ripton, Vermont, this 1952 program opens out in the fields with the poet feeding his horses, then moves to his living room where he proceeds to discuss topics spanning his long and fruitful career.
Summary
Robert Frost has created masterpieces with his words and understanding of life. As we read Robert Frost’s quotes about poetry, relationships, love, and education, we can appreciate his wisdom and creativity that’s hard to come by in these times. He is an unforgettable part of American poetry who will keep inspiring people with his timeless verses.
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Image Credits
Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Photographer unidentified, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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