Robert Frost (1874–1963) was one of America’s most famous poets. This four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize is celebrated for such well-known poems as “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Frost’s early years were difficult. After quitting Harvard University due to illness at age 25, Frost lived on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, for 12 years. He woke up early to write poetry and then worked on the farm all day. He was not a successful farmer, and his family grew destitute. Frost sold the farm and moved to Britain in 1911. There, he befriended the poet and essayist Edward Thomas; they regularly took long walks in the English countryside. Thomas’s habitual hesitancy on what path they should stroll amused Frost and inspired his best-known poem, “The Road Not Taken” from Mountain Interval (1920.)
In England, Frost published A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914.) The latter sold 20,000 copies and made him famous. After three years in Britain, Frost returned to America and supported himself through his readings and his writing. Frost’s other books include Mountain Interval (1916,) New Hampshire (1923,) A Further Range (1937,) and A Witness Tree (1943.)
Frost’s poetry is revered to this day for his portrayals of the country life of New England with ordinary people and everyday routines, and his grasp of American colloquial speech.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert Frost
Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Friendship
A man has as much right as a woman to a good cry now and again. The snow gave me shelter; the horse understood and gave me the time.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Crying
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
—Robert Frost
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Youth, Home
Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Risk-taking, Courage
The only way around is through.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Success & Failure, Achievement
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Change
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.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Acceptance
You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Freedom
Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Loss, Losing, Losers
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Faith, Challenges, Work, Bureaucracy
Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Happiness
The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Education
Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Education, Perseverance
Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That is voting.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
Sometimes, the only way out is through.
—Robert Frost
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
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Feelings, Marriage, Desire, Romance, Love
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Men, Women, Fools, Men & Women, Nature
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Memory, Birthdays, Diplomacy, Age
Suddenly, quietly, you realize that – from this moment forth – you will no longer walk through this life alone. Like a new sun this awareness arises within you, freeing you from fear, opening your life. It is the beginning of love, and the end of all that came before.
—Robert Frost
Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
—Robert Frost
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.
—Robert Frost
Devotion
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
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Justice, Lawyers
A champion of the working man has never yet been known to die of overwork.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Society, Work
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Communication, World
Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
—Robert Frost
Topics: Love
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