H.Q. Frost Quotes

Democracy is the best chance for the best people.

Not to sink under being man and wife, But get some color and music out of life?

Summary riposte To the dreary wail There's no knowing what Love is all about. Poets know a lot.

I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.

New is a word for fools in towns who think Style upon style in dress and thought at last Must get somewhere.

A man has got to keep his extrication. The important thing is not to get bogged down In what he has to do to earn a living.

The Moon for all her light and grace Has never learned to know her place.

The people I want to hear about are the people who take risks.

A bird half wakened in the lunar noon Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.

One age is like another for the soul.

A turning point in modern history.

The best way to hate is the worst. 'Tis to find what the hated need, Never mind of what actual worth, And wipe that out of the earth. Let them die of unsatisfied greed.

Memento mori and obey the Lord. Art and religion love the somber chord.

Nations like the Cuban and the Swiss Can never hope to wage a Global Mission. No Holy Wars for them. The most the small Can ever give us is a nuisance brawl.

How are we to write The Russian novel in America As long as life goes so unterribly?

God once declared He was true And then took the veil and withdrew.

God turned to speak to me (Don't anybody laugh); God found I wasn't there At least not over half.

For hard it is to keep from being King When it's in you and in the situation.

For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery.

Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred. But here is not a question of what's sacred; Rather of what to face or run away from. I'd hate to be a runaway from nature.

States strong enough to do good are but few. Their number would seem limited to three.

No, in country money, the country scale of gain, The requisite lift of spirit has never been found.

It comes down to a doubt about the wisdom Of having children after having had them, So there is nothing we can do about it But warn the children they perhaps should have none.

Trust him to have his bitter politics Against his unacquaintances the rich Who sleep in houses of their own, though mortgaged. Conservatives, they don't know what to save.

... War is for everyone, for children too. I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't. The best way is to come uphill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.

The footpath down to the well is healed.

But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear.

Live and let live, believe and let believe. 'Twas said the lesser gods were only traits Of the one awful God. Just so the saints Are God's white light refracted into colors.

There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

As for his evil tidings, Belshazzar's overthrow, Why hurry to tell Belshazzar What soon enough he would know?

Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul.

If one by one we counted people out

I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God.

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.

Oh, come forth into the storm and rout And be my love in the rain.

I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.

He thought that I was after him for a feather--- The white one in his tail: like one who takes everything said as personal to himself.

What are we? Young or new? We must be something.

Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth.

The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.

You, of course, are a rose-- But were always a rose.

We're either nothing or a God's regret.

I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away / You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

I hate the idea that you ought to read the whole of anybody.

A true sonnet goes eight lines and then takes a turn for better or worse and goes six or eight lines more.