"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."

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

"There may be little or much beyond the grave But the strong are saying nothing until they see."

"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."

"Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books."

"I had a lovers quarrel with the world."

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

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

"I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."

"You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country."

"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

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

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

"Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting."

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

"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."

"I always entertain great hopes."

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

"Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space."

"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 leave behind.With all I have to hold with hand and mindAnd heart, if need be, I will do my best.To keep their building balanced at my breast.I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;Then sit down in the middle of them all.I had to drop the armful in the roadAnd try to stack them in a better load."

"Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on."

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

"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 let go with the heart."

"Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart."

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

"To be social is to be forgiving."

"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."

"The TelephoneWhen I was just as far as I could walkFrom here todayThere was an hourAll stillWhen leaning with my head against a flowerI heard you talk.Don't say I didn't for I heard you sayYou spoke from that flower on the window sill-Do you remember what it was you said ''First tell me what it was you thought you heard.''Having found the flower and driven a bee awayI leaned my headAnd holding by the stalkI listened and I thought I caught the wordWhat was itDid you call me by my name Or did you saySomeone said "Come"I heard it as I bowed.''I may have thought as much but not aloud.'Well so I came."

"The only way round is through."

"I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his keys.And of course there must be something wrongIn waiting to silence any song."

"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 into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?"

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

"You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider."

"We ran as if to meet the moon."

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

"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair."

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

"Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so."

"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 no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places."

"It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married."

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

"The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader."

"Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country."

"I am not a teacher, but an awakener."

"The artist in me cries out for design."

"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 past.Somber clouds in the west were massed.Out in the porch's sagging floor,leaves got up in a coil and hissed,Blindly struck at my knee and missed.Something sinister in the toneTold me my secret must be known:Word I was in the house aloneSomehow must have gotten abroad,Word I was in my life alone,Word I had no one left but God."

"All thought is a feat of association having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew."

"But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

"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..."

"I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power."