Robert Frost Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

2. For dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true

3. Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

4. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

5. I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better. Birches

6. Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

7. The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.

8. They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.

9. We love the things we love for what they are.

10. A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

11. A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

12. Acquainted with the NightI have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,One luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night. West-Running Brook

13. Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?

14. But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.

15. Fireflies in the GardenBy 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. The Poetry of Robert Frost

16. GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?

17. I could give all to Time except -- exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would not part with I have kept. The Poetry of Robert Frost

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

19. INTO MY OWN One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. 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. A Boy's Will

20. Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64) Interviews With Robert Frost

21. La strada non presaDue strade divergevano in un bosco d'autunnoe dispiaciuto di non poterle percorrere entrambe,essendo un solo viaggiatore, a lungo indugiaifissandone una, più lontano che potevofin dove si perdeva tra i cespugli.Poi presi l'altra, che era buona ugualmentee aveva forse l'aspetto miglioreperché era erbosa e meno calpestatasebbene il passaggio le avesse rese quasi uguali.Ed entrambe quella mattina erano ricoperte di foglieche nessun passo aveva anneritooh, mi riservai la prima per un altro giornoanche se, sapendo che una strada conduce verso un'altra,dubitavo che sarei mai tornato indietro.Lo racconterò con un sospiroda qualche parte tra molti anni:due strade divergevano in un bosco ed io -io presi la meno battuta,e questo ha fatto tutta la differenza.

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

23. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

24. Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

25. 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 twiceI think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

26. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningWhose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.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. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

27. Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.The world has room to make a bear feel free;The universe seems cramped to you and me.Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage,That all day fights a nervous inward rage,His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.He paces back and forth and never restsThe toenail click and shuffle of his feet,The telescope at one end of his beat,And at the other end the microscope,Two instruments of nearly equal hope,And in conjunction giving quite a spread. West-Running Brook

28. The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.

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

30. The Road Not TakenTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 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.