830 Quotes by Robert Frost

We shall be known by the delicacy of where we stop short.

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.

Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt – above paying its respects to anybody’s doubt whatsoever.

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

I won’t have it, in poetry, that bulk counts. People say to me, ‘Now settle down and do a long work, since you have shown the public that you can produce beautiful short poetry.’ And their implication tells me that making two verses or a short poem does not satisfy their concept of what an accomplished poet should be able to do. Bulk they want, as evidence of a man’s power.

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’m drunk-nonsensical tired out.

All thought is a feat of association; having what’s in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn’t know you knew.

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.