Poetry Quotes by Robert Frost

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

— Robert Frost

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

— Robert Frost

Writing a poem is discovering.

— Robert Frost

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

— Robert Frost

“Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.”

— Robert Frost

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

— Robert Frost

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

— Robert Frost

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

— Robert Frost

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

— Robert Frost

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.

— Robert Frost

Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.

— Robert Frost

Poetry is a reaching out forward expression, an effort to find fulfillment

— Robert Frost

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

— Robert Frost

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.

— Robert Frost

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

— Robert Frost

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

— Robert Frost

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem…

— Robert Frost

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a…

— Robert Frost

For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a…

— Robert Frost

You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what…

— Robert Frost

“A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong,…

— Robert Frost

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

— Robert Frost

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if…

— Robert Frost

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us. Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth, Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set…

— Robert Frost

“I won't have it, in poetry, that bulk counts. People say to me, 'Now settle down and do a long work, since…

— Robert Frost

“The promising young poets, the hopefuls? I'd name Richard Wilbur, Peter Viereck, Karl Shapiro, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ciardi...Leonard Bacon...but it…

— Robert Frost

A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." -…

— Robert Frost

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that…

— Robert Frost

“The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse... To be too subjective with what…

— Robert Frost

“THE FIGURE A POEM MAKES No one can really hold that ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It…

— Robert Frost

“No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had…

— Robert Frost

I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have made safe for…

— Robert Frost

“Reluctance Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view…

— Robert Frost

“Tree At My Window Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never…

— Robert Frost

“One of my wishes is that those dark trees. So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze. Were not, as 'twere,…

— Robert Frost

“Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for,…

— Robert Frost

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though;…

— Robert Frost

“Acquainted with the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I…

— Robert Frost

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

— Robert Frost

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

— Robert Frost