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People are the common denominator of progress. So ... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize ... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

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Aug 03, 2025

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It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.
Robert Lee Frost

Quote Author: Robert Lee Frost

Robert Lee Frost

Robert Lee Frost

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 - January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work frequently used themes from rural life in New England, using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes.

Other Robert Lee Frost Quotes

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.

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.

You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

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

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

Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship by your side Than none at all. Provide, provide!

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.

For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing ... is discovering.

Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.

That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.

The old dog barks backward without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near.

Style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

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

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended—and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.

It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.

So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay.

I am not a teacher but an awakener.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully 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.

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

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

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough and 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.

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.

We get twitted now and then on how we made this country. Well, we took the whole business, of course. It's not just that corner that we took from Mexico. When we got it all together, we got a very shapely country—the best continental cut in all the world, between the two oceans and in the right temperature zone.

The best way out is always through.

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.

Freedom lies in being bold.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

I hold it the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

In three words I can sum up everything I've ever learned about life: It goes on.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

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; 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.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day.

How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

The 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.

I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some say when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on, I shall have less to say, But I shall be none.

I don't like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend ... asked me to go to the top of the Empire State Building once, and I told him that he shouldn't treat New York as a sight—it's feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place else.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been — alone, As all must be, I said within my heart, Whether they work together or apart.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases ... but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found that it was ourselves.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you might eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

Nature does not complete things. She is chaotic. Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orch—ard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night.

Why 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?

A poem ... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.... It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.

An idea is a feat of association.

Any eye is an evil eye That looks in on to a mood apart.

The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

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.

Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take—and took.

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went— Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all.

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming.

Education is ... hanging around until you've caught on.

Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.

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.

My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.

Keep cold, young orchard. Goodbye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below.

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.... Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family— But not much in between unless a college.

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

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.

In three words, I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on.

We love the things we love for what they are.

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.

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's the wife who can't and will.

There's absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go very slow.... What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed.

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. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

I'm not a teacher, but an awakener.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

The Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleighbells in a ghost of snow.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I shan't be gone long. — You come too.

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when a sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease.

All those who try to go it sole alone Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

We heard the miniature thunder where he fled.

It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has.

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?

I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

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. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes.

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 comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out.

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

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.

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.

There are tones of voice that mean more than words.

The reason why worry kills more people than hard work is that more people worry than work.

The rose is a rose, And was always a rose, But the theory now goes That the apple's a rose, And the pear is, and so's The plum, I suppose, The dear only knows What will next prove a rose, You, of course, are a rose - But were always a rose.

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