In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
We love the things we love for what they are.
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.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Freedom lies in being bold.
The best way out is always through.
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
I am not a teacher, but an awakener.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
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.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.
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.
Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
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.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean- Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.
Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.
How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?
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 mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
How many things would you attempt If you knew you could not fail
Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
We ran as if to meet the moon.
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.
The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive.
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.
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.
Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.
I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout And be my love in the rain.
By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body— the wishbone.
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn
Good fences make good neighbors.
Come over the hills and far with me And be my love in the rain.
Anything more than the truth would be too much.
You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there.
What we live by we die by.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
Nothing gold can stay.
Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
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.
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.
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 me That I need learn to let go with the heart.
I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
My goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation, As my two eyes make one in sight.
The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length
Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.
Hope is not found in a way out but a way through.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be.
For I have had too much Of apple-picking:I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired.
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...
You, of course, are a rose-- But were always a rose.
A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.
When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.
The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.
For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true
What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.
I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great
I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart
Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.
I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago.
Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent.
Our very life depends on everythings' recurring til we answer from within.
A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth.
So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
