Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

RELUCTANCEOut through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended;I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended;I have come by the highway home, And lo,...

I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great

I’d like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth’s the right...

Fireflies in the GardenBy Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never...

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?

For dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true

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

The ArmfulFor every parcel I stoop down to seizeI lose some other off my arms and knees,And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,Extremes too hard to comprehend at. onceYet nothing I should care to...

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Families break up when they get hints you don’t intend and miss hints that you do.

En dos palabras puedo resumir cuanto he aprendido acerca de la vida: Sigue adelante.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on...

The best way out is always through.

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

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

And on the worn book of old-golden I brought not here to read, it seems, but holdAnd freshen in this air of withering sweetness;

The rain to the wind said,You push and I’ll pelt.’They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged–though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd...

I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the...

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

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent.

There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will...

These 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.

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by...

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloudAnd goes down burning into the gulf below,No voice in nature is heard to cry aloudAt what has happened. Birds, at least must knowIt is the...

God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown,But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown.And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live,And said “To you, my children, These lovely flowers I...

Freedom lies in being bold.

If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.

The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.

But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too...

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

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.

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

The mind-is not the heart.I may yet live, as I know others live,To wish in vain to let go with the mind-Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells meThat I need learn to...

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

What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.

Fire and IceSome say the world will end in fire,Some say 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 to hate.To...

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without...

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

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Two such as you with such a master speedCannot be parted nor be swept awayFrom one another once you are agreedThat life is only life forevermoreTogether wing to wing and oar to oar