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

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has...

La strada non presaDue strade divergevano in un bosco d’autunnoe dispiaciuto di non poterle percorrere entrambe,essendo un solo viaggiatore, a lungo indugiaifissandone una, più lontano che potevofin dove si perdeva tra i cespugli.Poi presi l’altra,...

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees,So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,But stretched away unto the edge of doom.I should...

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

Part of a moon was falling down the west,Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.Its light poured softly in her lap. She sawAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong...

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

Where had I heard this wind beforeChange like this to a deeper roar?What would it take my standing there for,Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was...

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars—on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.

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

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

Tree at my window, window tree,My sash is lowered when night comes on;But let there never be curtain drawnBetween you and me.Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,And thing next most diffuse to cloud,Not all...

Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That’s voting.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get...

For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we...

And lonely as it is that lonelinessWill be more lonely ere it will be less–A blanker whiteness of benighted snowWith no expression, nothing to express.They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars–on stars where...

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.