“
We love the things we love for what they are.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
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.
”
”
Robert Frost (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
“
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
”
”
Robert Frost (Birches)
“
A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
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?
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Come over the hills and far with me
And be my love in the rain.
”
”
Robert Frost (Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949)
“
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The 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.
”
”
Robert Frost (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
“
You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
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.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Swinger of Birches)
“
God made a beauteous garden
With lovely flowers strown,
But one straight, narrow pathway
That was not overgrown.
And to this beauteous garden
He brought mankind to live,
And said "To you, my children,
These lovely flowers I give.
Prune ye my vines and fig trees,
With care my flowers tend,
But keep the pathway open
Your home is at the end."
God's Garden
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever truly done
For Heaven and the future's sakes
”
”
Robert Frost
“
To Earthward"
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of--was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.
”
”
James Lee Burke
“
Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.
”
”
Edward Hirsch (How To Read A Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Harvest Book))
“
I think Mr. Robert Frost has a little too much time on his hands.
”
”
Sharon Creech (Love That Dog (Jack, #1))
“
But yield who will their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
You will always be the Matriarch—the Queen of Hearts. Your hand rocked my cradle, and you ruled my world.
”
”
Dipa Sanatani (The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey)
“
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
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?
”
”
Robert Frost (The Poetry of Robert Frost)
“
Start with a big fat lump in your throat. Start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, a crazy lovesickness, and run with it. If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love. And don’t stop until you get what you love.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Lovers, forget your love,
And list the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
The Telephone
When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't for I heard you say
You 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 away
I leaned my head
And holding by the stalk
I listened and I thought I caught the word
What was it
Did you call me by my name
Or did you say
Someone said "Come"
I heard it as I bowed.'
'I may have thought as much but not aloud.'
Well so I came.
”
”
Robert Frost (The Poetry of Robert Frost)
“
Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.
When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,
He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.
He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.
But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.
Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.
But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
”
”
Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken and Other Poems)
“
Love is . . . needing to be with this one person. No—it’s more like wanting to need to be with this one person. Last semester my English professor read us this great Robert Frost quotation that went something like, ‘Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
”
”
Daria Snadowsky (Anatomy of a Single Girl (Anatomy, #2))
“
So I’m you’re wildflower, huh?” My cheeks heat. I might have gone a little overboard with my writing. I’m no Robert Frost, but I can get inspired too. “I love when you get all shy on me. It’s cute.” “I’m not shy.
”
”
Lauren Asher (Redeemed (Dirty Air, #4))
“
The grand scheme of a life, maybe (just maybe), is not about knowing or not knowing, choosing or not choosing. Perhaps what is truly known can’t be described or articulated by creativity or logic, science or art — but perhaps it can be described by the most authentic and meaningful combination of the two: poetry: As Robert Frost wrote, a poem 'begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.'
I recommend the following course of action for those who are just beginning their careers or for those like me, who may be reconfiguring midway through: heed the words of Robert Frost. Start with a big, fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, or a crazy lovesickness, and run with it.
”
”
Debbie Millman (Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design)
“
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace...centered and unified there.
[Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.
”
”
Sue Monk Kidd (God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved)
“
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.
God bless himself can no one else be blessed
I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori.
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.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
People who do “lowly” jobs with love and energy find themselves being promoted and offered other “better” jobs very quickly. Because they understand what Robert Frost meant when he said, “The way out is through.
”
”
Steve Chandler (Time Warrior: How to defeat procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and chaos)
“
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
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?
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
My November Guest"
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 walked the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
Robert Frost, The Complete Poems ( Henry Holt & Co, 1949)
”
”
Robert Frost (Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949)
“
Love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly."
Robert Frost
”
”
Madelyn Hill
“
My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
The realist always falls in love with a girl he has grown up with, the romanticist with a girl from 'off somewhere.
”
”
Robert Frost (The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1: 1886–1920)
“
You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
The Silken Tent
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends the frozen ground swell under it.
”
”
Robert Frost (Mending Wall)
“
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
”
”
Robert Frost (New Hampshire)
“
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
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 and accept the end Of a love or a season?
”
”
Robert Frost (The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged)
“
He had always thought that a Native American should have shot Robert Frost for the outrageous lie of the line “The land was ours before we were the land’s.” What a scandal that would be, America’s best-loved geezer falling in a battle over poetry.
”
”
Jim Harrison (The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas)
“
A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.
'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'
We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when tot the heart of man
Was it ever less than a teason
to go with the drift of things,
to yield with a grace to reason,
and bow and accept and accept the end
of a love or a season?
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
He knew another place, a wood,
And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs;
And if he stood on one of these,
'Twould be among the tops of trees,
Their upper branches round him wreathing,
Their breathing mingled with his breathing.
If-if he stood! Enough of ifs!
He knew a path that wanted walking;
He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
A thought that wanted further thinking;
A love that wanted re-renewing.
Nor was this just a way of talking
To save him the expense of doing.
With him it boded action, deed.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Further Range)
“
The 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
”
”
Robert Frost
“
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
”
”
Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
“
We love the things we love for what they are
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world's embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
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.
”
”
Robert Frost (Mountain Interval)
“
PUTTING IN THE SEED You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree. (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
”
”
Robert Frost (The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged)
“
I tend to agree with Robert Frost when he says, 'Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.' By this definition, I don’t think anyone can claim that we are successfully educating this next generation.
”
”
Brian Huskie (A White Rose: A Soldier's Story of Love, War, and School)
“
Robert Frost captured a deep truth when he wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Because your self-preservation instinct keeps telling you, “Unless you have walls you are not safe,” unconsciously you keep building them. Later, you struggle with them. This is an endless cycle.
”
”
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy)
“
Carpe Diem
By Edna Stewart
Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I?
The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me?
Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves,
we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food.
My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born?
The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind.
One gush! It blows away. It’s trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass.
Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing?
The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not.
Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more.
Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling!
Enjoy the day.
”
”
Edna Stewart (The Call of the Christmas Pecan Tree)
“
Monotony? Have we not always had the same stars and the same sky above us, changing only in its shades of blue and gray and purple black? And who shall say that such themes are exhausted? Have we not always had love and passion, war and peace, summer and winter and spring and fall with us? And are these things unable longer to impel us to spiritual variations?
”
”
Robert Frost (Interviews with Robert Frost)
“
personage was formally identified upon entrance: Acclaimed eighty-seven-year-old poet Robert Frost; father of antibiotics Selman Waksman; literature Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck; astronaut John Glenn; immunologist Thomas Weller, whose virus research enabled the polio vaccine; J. Robert Oppenheimer, Manhattan Project director; celebrated novelists James Baldwin and William Styron—in all, a parade of 127 guests and their spouses.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Hyla Brook"
By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or flourished and come up in jewelweed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent,
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.
”
”
Robert Frost (The Poetry of Robert Frost)
“
I could not now say when I first grew to love the wild, only that I did, and that a need for it will always remain strong in me. As a child, whenever I read the word, it conjured images of wide spaces, remote and figureless. Isolated islands off Atlantic coasts. Unbounded forests, and blue snow-light falling on to drifts marked with the paw-prints of wolves. Frost-shattered summits and corries holding lochs of great depth. And this was the vision of a wild place that had stayed with me: somewhere boreal, wintry, vast, isolated, elemental, demanding of the traveller in its asperities. To reach a wild place was, for me, to step outside human history.
”
”
Robert Macfarlane (The Wild Places)
“
Two paths with very worthy objectives, but only one results in pleasing God; ironically, it is not the Pleasing God path! When we choose the path of Pleasing God, we end up neither pleasing Him nor learning to live by faith. Our spiritual lives are dependent upon our ability to follow. But when we choose the Trusting God path, continually admitting our brokenness and humbly embracing the sufficiency of Christ, we experience both trusting God and pleasing God. Our spiritual lives are not motivated by guilt, fear, and shame but by love, desire, and gratitude. Two paths … very different results. In the powerful words of Robert Frost, “I chose the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” This choice truly does make all the difference in our lives.
”
”
Alan Kraft (Good News for Those Trying Harder)
“
i think i love fire and ice by robert frost not because it deals with the end of all things, but because it deals with love. love can destroy all things when you have it, or it can destroy all things when you do not. it can either save you, or kill you. there are many kinds of love: the love with someone who fits you, and meets all of your needs. this can create a contentment that makes you happy and full. there is a more dangerous form of love. this love is kin to obsession, possession, and desire. you cannot breathe without their beings there. you cannot think, but of them. they plague you, and creep into everything you do until you despair of it. then one day you realize, not only did losing them create the most beautiful way of finding who they truly were, but it created you as you are. they made you something greater than you were. love is sickness, but it is the kind of sickness that makes life worth living. you realize that not only can you now live with them, but you can live without them, and you can stand beside them, while letting them have their freedom. The deep desire to hold them higher sits so deep in your soul that you would give your life to have them be no one other than the person you have come to see them as. faults and all, because no they aren't perfect, but who should be?
”
”
Jennifer Megan Varnadore
“
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A
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Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
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Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. —Robert Frost
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Marie Force (Every Little Thing (Butler, Vermont, #1))
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Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.
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Robert Frost
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Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
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Robert Frost (New Hampshire)
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As we can learn from every man or woman or child around us when, touched and moved, they tell of something they loved or hated this day, yesterday, or some other day long past. At a given moment, the fuse, after sputtering wetly, flares, and the fireworks begin.
Oh, it's limping crude hard work for many, with language in their way. But I have heard farmers tell about their very first wheat crop on their first farm after moving from another state, and if it wasn't Robert Frost talking, it was his cousin, five times removed. I have heard locomotive engineers talk about America in the tones of Thomas Wolfe who rode our country with his style as they ride it in their steel. I have heard mothers tell of the long nights with their firstborn when they were afraid that they and the baby might die. And I have heard my grandmother speak of her first ball when she was seventeen. And they were all, when their souls grew warm, poets.
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Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You)
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The 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.
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Robert Frost
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You may put this in your interview, Miss Fife, that Robert Frost believes in civilization—which is to say the Caucasian civilization.” “But,
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Joyce Carol Oates (Lovely, Dark, Deep)
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At the heart of this home is my family; where my family is, is home. If I lived by myself, home would be the place peopled with reminders of everyone I loved. My home is a place of unconditional belonging, which is part of its pleasure, part of its pain- as Robert Frost wrote, home is “something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” At home, I feel a greater sense of safety and acceptance, and also of responsibility and obligation.
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Gretchen Rubin (Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life)
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The 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.
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Robert Frost (Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening)
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POEMS “Song of the Open Road”—Walt Whitman “The Tyger”—William Blake “I Thought of You”—Sara Teasdale “Sonnet 140”—William Shakespeare “A Clear Midnight”—Walt Whitman “Something Left Undone”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Prayer for My Daughter”—William Butler Yeats “My Little March Girl”—Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Mountain Sat Upon the Plain”—Emily Dickinson “The Song of Wandering Aengus”—William Butler Yeats “Jabberwocky”—Lewis Carroll “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—Robert Frost “Continent’s End”—Robinson Jeffers “Forgiveness”—George MacDonald “O Me! O Life!”—Walt Whitman “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”—Robert Herrick “In Memoriam A.H.H.”—Alfred Lord Tennyson “i like my body when it is with your”—E. E. Cummings “A Psalm of Life”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”—William Butler Yeats “Three Marching Songs”—William Butler Yeats “Song of Myself”—Walt Whitman “in the rain”—E. E. Cummings “When All Is Done”—Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Wanderings of Oisin”—William Butler Yeats “The Cloud-Islands”—Clark Ashton Smith “love is more thicker than forget”—E. E. Cummings “Hymn to the North Star”—William Cullen Bryant “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”—Walt Whitman “The Young Man’s Song”—William Butler Yeats “If”—Rudyard Kipling “Character of the Happy Warrior”—William Wordsworth
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Terah Shelton Harris (One Summer in Savannah)
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Your ivory body pulses as the white
Flesh catches flame and rosy tremblings move
Over this sanctuary of delight, The last asylum of our love.
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Louis Untermeyer (New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frost's Poems)
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And yet for all this help of head and brain How happily instinctive we remain, Our best guide upward further to the light, Passionate preference such as love at sight.” -Robert Frost
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A.J. Messenger (Fallen (The Guardian #2))
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What motivates a creator? The desire for the creation to exist. A creator creates in order to bring the creation into being. People in the reactive-responsive orientation often have trouble understanding this sensibility: to create for the sake of the creation itself. Not for the praise, not for the "return on investment," not for what it may say about you, *but for its own sake.*
Poet Robert Frost captured the spirit of the orientation of the creative when he said:
"All the great things are done for their own sake."
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When you separate yourself from your creations, you can experience one of the most profound understandings of creativity - love. *The reason you would create anything is because you love it enough to see it exist.*
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Robert Fritz (The Path of Least Resistance)
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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.
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Robert Frost (The Poetry of Robert Frost)
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Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
--ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
To which I add:
Yes, but something there is which adores a mucous membrane.
--LEON TROTSKY TROUT (1946-1,001,986)
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Galápagos)
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My Butterfly. An Elegy
THINE emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.
The gray grass is not dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago—
It seems forever—
Since first I saw thee glance,
With all the dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.
When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.
Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.
And there were other things:
It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp:
Then fearful he had let thee win
Too far beyond him to be gathered in,
Snatched thee, o’er eager, with ungentle grasp.
Ah! I remember me
How once conspiracy was rife
Against my life—
The languor of it and the dreaming fond;
Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,
The breeze three odors brought,
And a gem-flower waved in a wand!
Then when I was distraught
And could not speak,
Sidelong, full on my cheek,
What should that reckless zephyr fling
But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!
I found that wing broken to-day!
For thou are dead, I said,
And the strange birds say.
I found it with the withered leaves
Under the eaves.
Robert Frost, A Boy’s Will. (1st World Library - Literary Society February 20, 2006) Originally published 1913.
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Robert Frost (A Boy's Will)
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আমি তো হয়েই গেছি একজন নিশিরাত সাথী।
হেঁটেছি বৃষ্টিতে ভিজে– বৃষ্টিতেই ফিরেও এসেছি।
পার হয়ে গেছি আমি শহরের দূরতম বাতি।
সর্বাধিক দুঃখক্লিষ্ট গলি আমি স্বচক্ষে দেখেছি
দায়িত্বপালনকারী দারোয়ানে কাটিয়েছি পাশে।
চোখের দু’পাতা ফেলে, ব্যাখ্যা সব গোপন রেখেছি।
থমকে দাঁড়িয়ে গেছি পদশব্দ যদি কিছু নাশে
কান্নার শব্দের তুল্য– কোনো কান্না দূর থেকে হয়,
পাশের সড়ক থেকে বাড়ির উপর দিয়ে আসে,
কিন্তু কেউ ডাকেনি তো, বিদায় বচনটিও নয়;
আরো দূরে, বহু দূরে অপার্থিব কোনো উচ্চতায়,
আলোকিত ঘড়ি এক আকাশের উল্টো থেকে কয়
না-শুভ বা না-অশুভ এই কাল আজিকার বাতি।
আমি তো রয়েই গেছি একজন নিশিরাত সাথী।
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Robert Frost (101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions))
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I have had an affinity for books throughout my life. Ever since I was little, I used to read children’s books and I loved going to book shops and buying books. My father would give me ten rupees to go to the Raina Book Depot in Srinagar, which was a great delight. When I went to Doon [a boarding school in Dehradun] I started reading more extensively. I remember reading many of the P.G. Wodehouse novels, the Sherlock Holmes and Scarlet Pimpernel series, and I loved the classics: War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, The Three Musketeers. I subsequently moved to more serious reading: books on philosophy and politics by Plato, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Vivekananda, the Arthurian novels by Mary Stewart and the Cretan novels of Mary Renault are some of my favourites. In poetry, I love Yeats, Wordsworth, Sri Aurobindo, Gurudev Tagore, Robert Frost in English; Ghalib, Faiz and Iqbal in Urdu, Dinkar and Tulsidas in Hindi.
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Karan Singh (An Examined Life: Essays and Reflections by Karan Singh)
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Lovers, Forget Your love,
And List To The Love Of These,
She A Window Flower,
And He A Winter Breeze.” -Robert Frost
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Robert Frost (By Robert Frost - Robert Frost's Poems)
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the woods are lovely, dark, and deep. but i have promises to keep, and miles to go before i sleep.
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Robert Frost (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
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The 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. Robert Frost
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Evie Gaughan (The Story Collector)
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The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep. — Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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Clive Barker (Weaveworld)
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The 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. ROBERT FROST “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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Paige Crutcher (A Circle of Uncommon Witches: A Novel)