We love the things we love for what they are.

Acquainted with the NightI 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...

If one by one we counted people outFor the least sin, it wouldn’t take us longTo get so we had no one left to live with.For to be social is to be forgiving.

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

Fragmentary BlueWhy make so much of fragmentary blueIn here and there a bird, or butterfly,Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as...

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

The Road Not TakenTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the...

Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

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

Nothing gold can stay.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to...

Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth’s unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than ‘neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the...

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

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 twiceI think I know enough of hateTo...

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves.

Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.

I would not come in.I meant not even if asked,And I hadn’t been.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary...

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

I could give all to Time except — exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would...

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…

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.