Philosophical Quotes From Robert Frost

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

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

"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity"

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

"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"


The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, 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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost


"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"

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

"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"

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


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

"You know how cunningly mankind is planned:We have one loving and one hating hand.
The loving’s made to hold each other like, While with the hating other hand we strike"

"Life is not so sinister-grave. Matter of fact has made them brave.
He is husband, she is wife. She fears not him, they fear not life."
- Robert Frost, "On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind"

"You've got to love what's loveable and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference"

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired"

"Don't be an agnostic--be something"

Frost, Robert, 1874–1963, American poet, b. San Francisco. Perhaps the most popular and beloved of 20th-century American poets, Frost wrote of the character, people, and landscape of New England. He was taken to Lawrence, Mass., his family's home for generations, at the age of 10. After studying briefly at Dartmouth, he worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, as a cobbler, a schoolteacher, and a journalist; he later entered Harvard but left after two years to try farming. In 1912 he went to England, where he received his first acclaim as a poet. After the publication of A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), he returned to the United States, settling on a farm near Franconia, N.H. Frost taught and lectured at several universities, including Amherst, Harvard, and the Univ. of Michigan. In later life he was accorded many honors; he made several goodwill trips for the U.S. State Dept., and in 1961 he recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.
Among Frost's volumes of poetry are New Hampshire (1923), West-running Brook (1928), Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), A Witness Tree (1942), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962). A Masque of Reason (1945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947) were blank verse plays. Although his work is rooted in the New England landscape, Frost was no mere regional poet. The careful local observations and homely details of his poems often have deep symbolic, even metaphysical, significance. His poems are concerned with human tragedies and fears, his reaction to the complexities of life, and his ultimate acceptance of his burdens. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. Frost's critical reputation has recently rebounded after a period when his poetry was often criticized for being old-fashioned.



"The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism"

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

"The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them"

"The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything"

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."

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

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work "

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

"But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep"
Robert Frost, Poet

Born: 26 March 1874
Birthplace: San Francisco, California
Died: 29 January 1963
Best Known As: American poet who wrote "The Road Not Taken"
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