Robert Frost Quotes
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Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
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The city is all right. To live in one Is to be civilized, stay up and read Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise By waiting up instead of getting up.
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In spring more mortal singers than belong To any one place cover us with song. Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng....
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'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?' I don't suppose the water's changed at all. You and I know enough to know it's warm Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. But all the fun's in how you say a thing.
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You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.
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Nothing is quite honest that is not commercial, but not everything commercial is honest.
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The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch, And wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.
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The test is always how we treat the poor.
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A bird half wakened in the lunar noon Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.
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When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be, be.
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If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia.
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Only God and I knew what I meant when I wrote it, now only God knows.
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I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have out walked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. 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; And further still at an unearthly light, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
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Many lovers have been divorced By having what is free enforced.
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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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Trust him to have his bitter politics Against his unacquaintances the rich. Who sleep in houses of their own, though mortgaged. Conservatives, they don't know what to save.
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The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean- Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.
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Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.
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One of the hardest things in life to accept is a called third strike.
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A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.
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The only way around is through.
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No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.
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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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Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom.