"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 the skies."

"Humor is the most engaging cowardice."

"Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market."

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

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

"We love the things we love for what they are."

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

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

"Never ask of money spent Where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent."

"Don't be agnostic - be something."

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

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

"The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion."

"If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane."

"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."

"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."

"If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia."

"Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

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

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

"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 yet)--Though some savants make earth include the sky;And blue so far above us comes so high,It only gives our wish for blue a whet."

"I go to school the youth to learn the future."

"I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense."

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

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

"The farm is a base of operations"a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development. I think a person has to be withdrawn into himself to gather inspiration so that he is somebody when he comes out again among folks"when he "comes to market' with himself. He learns that he's got to be almost wastefully alone."

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

"I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old."

"Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot."

"There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate."

"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."

"Pressed into service means pressed out of shape."

"The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat."

"I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

"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."

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

"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 change to darkness in the sky.Murmuring something quiet in her breast,One bird begins to close a faded eye;Or overtaken too far from his nest,Hurrying low above the grove, some waifSwoops just in time to his remembered tree.At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!Now let the night be dark for all of me.Let the night be too dark for me to seeInto the future. Let what will be, be."

"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 really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part."

"You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination - what's right and what's wrong what's good and what's bad."

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

"The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended."

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

"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."

"The middle of the road is where the white line is - and that's the worst place to drive."

"Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting."

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering."

"Nothing can make injustice just but mercy."

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

"The best way out is always through."