Robert Frost

“He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors.”

“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.”

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

“The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”

“How many things would you attemptIf you knew you could not fail”

“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.”

“I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.”

“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.”

“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

“You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.”

“What we live by we die by.”

“They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.”

“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”

“He thought he kept the universe alone;For all the voice in answer he could wakeWas but the mocking echo of his ownFrom some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.Some morning from the boulder-broken beachHe would cry out on life, that what it wantsIs not its own love back in copy speech,But counter-love, original response.And nothing ever came of what he criedUnless it was the embodiment that crashedIn the cliff's talus on the other side,And then in the far-distant water splashed,But after a time allowed for it to swim,Instead of proving human when it nearedAnd someone else additional to him,As a great buck it powerfully appeared,Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,And landed pouring like a waterfall,And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,And forced the underbrush--and that was all.”

“Acquainted with the NightI 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 beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,One luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”

“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”

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”

“To Earthward"Love at the lips was touchAs sweet as I could bear;And once that seemed too much;I lived on airThat crossed me from sweet things,The flow of--was it muskFrom hidden grapevine springsDownhill at dusk?I had the swirl and acheFrom sprays of honeysuckleThat when they're gathered shakeDew on the knuckle.I craved strong sweets, but thoseSeemed strong when I was young;The petal of the roseIt was that stung.Now no joy but lacks salt,That is not dashed with painAnd weariness and fault;I crave the stainOf tears, the aftermarkOf almost too much love,The sweet of bitter barkAnd burning clove.When stiff and sore and scarredI take away my handFrom leaning on it hardIn grass and sand,The hurt is not enough:I long for weight and strengthTo feel the earth as roughTo all my length.”

“What but design of darkness to appall?- If design govern in a thing so small.”

“I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old”

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

“You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.”

“Oh, come forth into the storm and routAnd be my love in the rain.”

“The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.”

“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.”

“I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.”

“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.”

“I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame 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 skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“You, of course, are a rose--But were always a rose.”

“He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, "Good fences makegood neighbors.”

“I turned to speak to GodAbout the world's despairBut to make bad matters worseI found God wasn't there.”

“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloudAnd goes down burning into the gulf below,No voice in nature is heard to cry aloudAt what has happened. Birds, at least must knowIt 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 waifSwoops 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 seeInto the future. Let what will be, be.”

“Di hutan, kulihat dua cabang jalan terbentang. Kuambil yang jarang dilalui orang. Dan itulah yang membuat segala perbedaan”

“The Trial By ExistenceEven the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its 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. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.”

“Anything more than the truth would be too much.”

“When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.”

“I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great”

“So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.”

“I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn”

“We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.”

“In A Glass of CiderIt seemed I was a mite of sedimentThat waited for the bottom to fermentSo I could catch a bubble in ascent.I rode up on one till the bubble burst,And when that left me to sink back reversedI was no worse off than I was at first.I'd catch another bubble if I waited.The thing was to get now and then elated.”

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”

“I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”

“Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.”

“Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offense.”

“A poem begins with a lump in the throat”

“Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.”

“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”

“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 meThat I need learn to let go with the heart.”