Robert Frost was an American, born on the 26th March 1874 and is a critically acclaimed poet, often depicting rural life in his works, particular of the New England area that he knew so well. He used this as a foundation to explore social and philosophical themes in the early 20th Century.
Frost received countless honours during his lifetime and perhaps his greatest achievement is the fact that he is the only poet ever to have received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. Such a distinguished career of published work means he truly is a great of American poetry.
Like all authors and poets, Frost had both supports and critics, with supports praising Frost for his ability to describe the lives of ordinary people, drawing on their life to create dramatic scenes and a feeling of honesty. Some well known writers have mentioned Frost as an influence, including Frosts poem “Fire and Ice”, which George R R Martin says influenced his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire.
An inspiration to many, his works endure to this day and the collection of quotes below is simply a small part of this incredible mans work.
1. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
2. “We love the things we love for what they are.”
3. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
4. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
5. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
6. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
7. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
8. “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”
9. “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
10. “Freedom lies in being bold.”
11. “The best way out is always through.”
12. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
13. “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.”
14. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
15. “I am not a teacher, but an awakener.”
16. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
17. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
18. “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
19. “Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
20. “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.”
21. “I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.”
22. “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”
23. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
24. “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill 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.”
25. “I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”
26. “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”
27. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
28. “How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”
29. “There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.”
30. “A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.”
31. “How many things would you attempt If you knew you could not fail”
32. “We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
33. “We ran as if to meet the moon.”
34. “The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
35. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
36. “Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.”
37. “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
38. “The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
39. “Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That’s voting.”
40. “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.”
41. “The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
42. “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.”
43. “The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive.”
44. “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
45. “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”
46. “I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.”
47. “Oh, come forth into the storm and rout And be my love in the rain.”
48. “By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”
49. “I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn”
50. “Families break up when they get hints you don’t intend and miss hints that you do.”
51. “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
52. “You’re always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.”
53. “A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body— the wishbone.”
54. “Come over the hills and far with me and be my love in the rain.”
55. “A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”
56. “Anything more than the truth would be too much.”
57. “Good fences make good neighbors.”
58. “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
59. “You’ve got to love what’s lovable, and hate what’s hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.”
60. “What we live by we die by.”
