Robert Frost 1874–1963
American poet 

1. I have been one acquainted with the night.
   
    
   ‘Acquainted with the Night’ (1928)
2. …Life is too much like a pathless wood
   Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
   Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
   From a twig's having lashed across it open.
   
    
   ‘Birches’ (1916)
3. 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.
   
    
   ‘Birches’ (1916)
4. Most of the change we think we see in life
   Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
   
    
   ‘The Black Cottage’ (1914)
5. Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
   And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
   
    
   ‘Cluster of Faith’ (1962)
6. And nothing to look backward to with pride,
   And nothing to look forward to with hope.
   
    
   ‘The Death of the Hired Man’ (1914)
7. ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
   They have to take you in.’
   ‘I should have called it
   Something you somehow haven't to deserve.’
   
    
   ‘The Death of the Hired Man’ (1914)
8. 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.
   
    
   ‘Desert Places’ (1936)
9. Some say the world will end in fire,
   Some say in ice.
   From what I've tasted of desire
   I hold with those who favour fire.
   
    
   ‘Fire and Ice’ (1923)
10. The land was ours before we were the land's.
    She was our land more than a hundred years
    Before we were her people.
    
     
    ‘The Gift Outright’ (1942)
11. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
    title of poem (1942)
12. I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
    
     
    ‘The Lesson for Today’ (1942)
13. Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.
    
     
    ‘Mending Wall’ (1914)
14. My apple trees will never get across
    And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
    He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’
    
     
    ‘Mending Wall’ (1914)
15. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
    What I was walling in or walling out,
    And to whom I was like to give offence.
    
     
    ‘Mending Wall’ (1914)
16. I never dared be radical when young
    For fear it would make me conservative when old.
    
     
    ‘Precaution’ (1936)
17. No memory of having starred
    Atones for later disregard,
    Or keeps the end from being hard.
    
     
    ‘Provide Provide’ (1936)
18. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less travelled by,
    And that has made all the difference.
    
     
    ‘The Road Not Taken’ (1916)
19. We dance round in a ring and suppose,
    But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
    
     
    ‘The Secret Sits’ (1942)
20. Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
    
     
    ‘The Self-Seeker’ (1914)
21. 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.
    
     
    ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (1923)
22. The best way out is always through.
    
     
    ‘A Servant to Servants’ (1914)
23. 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.
    
     
    ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (1923)
24. ‘Men work together’, I told him from the heart,
    ‘Whether they work together or apart’.
    
     
    ‘The Tuft of Flowers’ (1913)
25. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
    Collected Poems (1939) ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’
26. A momentary stay against confusion.
    of poetry
    Collected Poems (1939) ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’
27. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
    Collected Poems (1939) ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’
28. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.
    Collected Poems (1939) ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’
29. Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
    in Reader's Digest April 1960
30. A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
    in Muscatine Journal 22 August 1961
31. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
    Elizabeth S. Sergeant Robert Frost (1960) ch. 18
32. I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
    Edward Lathem Interviews with Robert Frost (1966)
33. Life continues ... it goes on. In these three words I can sum up everything I have learned in my 80 years about life, it goes on.
    attributed, 1963; quoted in Weldon B. White, speech, 24 November 1963; in Memorial Addresses in the Congress of the United States and Tributes in Eulogy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1964)
34. Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.
    Louis Untermeyer Robert Frost (1964)
35. By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
    attributed
36. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
    attributed