Robert Frost Quotes

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

The Master Speed

No speed of wind or water rushing by
but you have 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 such a master speed
From one another once you are agreed
that life is only life forevermore
together wing to wing and oar to oar.

As for the woods' excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.

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?

These 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.

He says the best way out is always through. / And I can agree to that, or in so far / As that I can see no way out but through

A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic.

I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really gold.

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

What is this?
This life?
Our sitting here by lanternlight together
Amid the wreckage of a former home?
You won't deny the lantern isn't new.
The stove is not, and you are not to me,
Nor I to you.

The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be — The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.

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