Robert Frost Quotes
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I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
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You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings -- there are no such things. There are only middles.
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There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.
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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.
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My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
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I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.
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Before now poetry has taken notice Of wars, and what are wars but politics Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?
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The footpath down to the well is healed.
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Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take-and took.
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Time and tide wait for no man, but always stand still for a woman of thirty.
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The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.
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I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
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Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.
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The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.
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Haven't you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels And children in the ships and in the towns?
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Now no joy but lacks salt .That is not dashed with pain and weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.
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I never feel more at home than at a ballgame.
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So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.
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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.
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Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
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Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.
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The only certain freedom's in departure.
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Lovers, forget your love And list to the love of these She a window flower And he a winter breeze ...
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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 his side of the standing argument.