Robert Frost
Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.
Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
“Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.”
“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body— the wishbone.”
“Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.”
“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.”
“En dos palabras puedo resumir cuanto he aprendido acerca de la vida: Sigue adelante.”
“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.”
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
“The best way out is always through.”
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
“I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better.”
“I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~And climb black branches up a snow-white trunkToward 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.”
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
“They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars—on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.”
“I would not come in.I meant not even if asked,And I hadn't been.”
“The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive.”
“The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.”
“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.”
“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 twiceI think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.”
“Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.”
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
“If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.”
“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.”
“The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.”
“We love the things we love for what they are.”
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
“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.”
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
“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.”
“The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length”
“My goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation,As my two eyes make one in sight.”
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”