H.Q. Frost Quotes

I have remained resentful to this day When any but myself presumed to say That there was anything I couldn't be.

I heard someone say he [Carl Sandburg] was the kind of writer who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by being translated into another language.

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air.

When clever people ask me where I get a poem, I despair.

I'm always saying something that's just the edge of something more.

I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago.

Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

I could give all to Time except--except What I myself have held.

I came from a very intellectual neighborhood. When we played cowboys and Indians as kids, I had to be Gandhi.

The only way out is to go through

If the day ever comes when they know who They are, they may know better where they are.

I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day.

We cannot tell some people what it is believe, partly because they are too stupid to understand, partly because we are too proudly vague to explain.

The problem for the King is just how strict The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law And discipline should be in school and state.

... A nation has to take its natural course Of Progress round and round in circles From King to Mob to King to Mob to King Until the eddy of it eddies out.

You can't trust God to be unmerciful. There you have the beginning of all wisdom.

I still say the only education worth anything is self-education.

Men work together, whether they work together or apart.

He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.

For, dear me, why abandon a belief, Merely because it ceases to be true, Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt, It will turn true again, for so it goes.

Nothing is quite honest that is not commercial, but not everything commercial is honest.

It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching.

There is little much beyond the grave, but the strong are saying nothing until they see.

Nature's never quite Sure she hasn't erred In her vague design.

Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.

Lord, I have loved Your sky, Be it said against or for me, Have loved it clear and high, Or low and stormy...

As a confirmed astronomer I'm always for a better sky.

Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

If the writer does not cry, the reader does not cry.

Affection is an overpowering craving to be compellingly sought.

Let those possess the land, and only those, Who love it with a love so strong and stupid That they may be abused and taken advantage of And made fun of by business, law, and art.

Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

Love has earth to which she clings.

There is no love. There's only love of men and women, love Of children, love of friends, of men, of God: Divine love, human love, parental love, Roughly discriminated for the rough.

I never take my own side in a quarrel.

When work becomes play, and play becomes your work, your life unfolds.

The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.

Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm-bound-away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.

An idea comes as near to something for nothing as you can get.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.

The chance is the remotest, Of its going much longer unnoticed, That I'm not keeping pace With the headlong human race

Now close the windows and hush all the fields: If the trees must, let them silently toss.

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family- But not much in between unless a college.

The best thing we're put here for's to see; The strongest thing that's given us to see with's a telescope. Someone in every town, seems to me, owes it to the town to keep one.