173 Quotes & Sayings By Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was born into a prestigious New England family and attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University. His first book, "Poems", appeared in 1915. He published "A Boy's Will", his first collection of poems, in 1916, and "The Road Not Taken", a description of a walk he had taken as a young man, in 1921. In 1927, he published "Birches" Read more

He wrote only one more collection of poems, "The Mountain Interval". Robert Frost has been called the greatest poet America has ever produced.

We love the things we love for what they are.
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We love the things we love for what they are. Robert Frost
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
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Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. Robert Frost
The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being...
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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. Robert Frost
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I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate wilfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. Robert Frost
Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever...
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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? Robert Frost
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned...
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In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. Robert Frost
These woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have...
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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. Robert Frost
And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have...
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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. Robert Frost
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
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Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. Robert Frost
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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
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I am not a teacher, but an awakener. Robert Frost
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why...
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Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. Robert Frost
There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill...
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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. Robert Frost
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the...
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We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. Robert Frost
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive...
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Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. Robert Frost
For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it...
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For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true Robert Frost
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They would not find me changed from him they knew – Only more sure of all I thought was true. Robert Frost
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God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown, But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live, And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end." God's Garden Robert Frost
Home is the place where, when you have to go...
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Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in...
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Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. Robert Frost
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Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in it nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth's unhonored things Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. Robert Frost
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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. Robert Frost
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a...
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A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Robert Frost
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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 twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Robert Frost
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
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Poetry is what gets lost in translation. Robert Frost
The rain to the wind said, You push and I'll...
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The rain to the wind said, You push and I'll pelt.' They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged--though not dead. I know how the flowers felt. Robert Frost
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
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To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. Robert Frost
We ran as if to meet the moon.
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We ran as if to meet the moon. Robert Frost
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust...
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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. Robert Frost
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INTO MY OWNOne 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. Robert Frost
A bank is a place where they lend you an...
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A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. Robert Frost
I would not come in. I meant not even if...
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I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been. Robert Frost
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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. Robert Frost
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GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then? Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop? . Robert Frost
A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak....
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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. Robert Frost
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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) . Robert Frost
I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free...
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I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. Robert Frost
Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot...
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Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar Robert Frost
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Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for, Holding open a restive door, Looking down hill to a frothy shore? Summer was past and day was past. Somber clouds in the west were massed. Out in the porch's sagging floor, leaves got up in a coil and hissed, Blindly struck at my knee and missed. Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God. . Robert Frost
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Fragmentary BlueWhy make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)-- Though some savants make earth include the sky; And blue so far above us comes so high, It only gives our wish for blue a whet. Robert Frost
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I could give all to Time except -- except What I myself have held. But why declare The things forbidden that while the Customs slept I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There, And what I would not part with I have kept. Robert Frost
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader....
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No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. Robert Frost
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The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work. Robert Frost
But yield who will to their separation, My object in...
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But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Robert Frost
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without...
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Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. Robert Frost
All thought is a feat of association.
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All thought is a feat of association. Robert Frost
What is done is done for the love of it-...
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What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all. Robert Frost
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The TelephoneWhen I was just as far as I could walk From here today There was an hour All still When leaning with my head against a flower I heard you talk. Don't say I didn't for I heard you say You spoke from that flower on the window sill- Do you remember what it was you said ''First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'' Having found the flower and driven a bee away I leaned my head And holding by the stalk I listened and I thought I caught the word What was it Did you call me by my name Or did you say Someone said "Come"I heard it as I bowed.'' I may have thought as much but not aloud.' Well so I came. Robert Frost
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The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism. Robert Frost
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Men work together, ' I told him from the heart, ' Whether they work together or apart. Robert Frost
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Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost
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They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves. Robert Frost
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No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm." How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below." I have to be gone for a season or so. Robert Frost
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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. Robert Frost
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Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent. Robert Frost
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Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do. Robert Frost
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But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing– Too present to imagine. Robert Frost
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For, dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt It will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor. As I sit here, and often times, I wish I could be monarch of a desert land I could devote and dedicate forever To the truths we keep coming back and back to.——from "The Black Cottage . Robert Frost
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Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. Robert Frost
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If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving. Robert Frost
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The only way out is through Robert Frost
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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. Robert Frost
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And lonely as it is that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less-- A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. 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. Robert Frost
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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; And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Robert Frost
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He moves in darkness as it seems to me Not of woods only and the shade of trees. Robert Frost
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How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you? Robert Frost
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I 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 beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. Robert Frost
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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. Robert Frost
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The mind-is not the heart. I may yet live, as I know others live, To wish in vain to let go with the mind- Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me That I need learn to let go with the heart. Robert Frost
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Two 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; Robert Frost
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The best way out is always through. Robert Frost
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My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane. Robert Frost
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Lovers, forget your love, And list the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. Robert Frost
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I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day; Have clapped my hands at him from the door When it seemed as if I could bear no more. The fault must partly have been in me. The bird was not to blame for his keys. And of course there must be something wrong In waiting to silence any song. Robert Frost
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More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. Robert Frost
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So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. Robert Frost
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Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting. Robert Frost
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The farm is a base of operations—a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development. I think a person has to be withdrawn into himself to gather inspiration so that he is somebody when he comes out again among folks—when he “comes to market’ with himself. He learns that he’s got to be almost wastefully alone. Robert Frost
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It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage... Robert Frost
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The ArmfulFor every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load. Robert Frost
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I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. Robert Frost
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An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. Robert Frost
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By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
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There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will come to nothing and be wasted. But some of it ought to go together under one idea. That idea is the thing to write on and write into the title at the head of your paper… One idea and a few subordinate ideas – [the trick is] to have those happen to you as you read and catch them – not let them escape you… The sidelong glance is what you depend on. You look at your author but you keep the tail of your eye on what is happening over and above your author in your own mind and nature. Robert Frost
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I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great Robert Frost
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Fire and IceSome 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 twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Robert Frost
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One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. Robert Frost
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The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. Robert Frost
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Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space. Robert Frost
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Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard the tenderness That wrought on him beside her in the night. Robert Frost
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No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. Robert Frost
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If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane. Robert Frost
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And on the worn book of old-golden I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; Robert Frost
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Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. Robert Frost
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To be social is to be forgiving. Robert Frost
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The only way round is through. Robert Frost
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Always fall in with what you're asked to accept.... My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with. Robert Frost
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You have freedom when you're easy in your harness. Robert Frost
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Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his sons the hardships that made him rich. Robert Frost
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I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old. Robert Frost