I always entertain great hopes.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both.

I am one who has been acquainted with the night.

Democracy is the best chance for the best people.

I hope to leave behind a few poems it will be hard to get rid of.

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.

Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that’s what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

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.

If you’re looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

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

The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

Education doesn’t change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.

Tolerance is the uncomfortable feeling that in the end the other could be right.

Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

A good book has no ending.

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.

All great things are done for their own sake.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look.

The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all.

The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation.

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.

You can’t get too much winter in the winter.

To be social is to be forgiving.

The old dog barks backward without getting up I can remember when he was a pup.

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

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

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

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.

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Any work of art must first of all tell a story.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

If you remember only one thing I’ve said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don’t know what it’s all about.

College is a refuge from hasty judgment.

Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other’s business.

I write to find out what I didn’t know I knew.

You’ve got to love what’s lovable, and hate what’s hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?

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

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.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go slow.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That’s all any of us have.

Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That’s voting.

You’ve often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.

I never take my own side in a quarrel.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

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.

Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar.

One of the hardest things in life to accept is a called third strike.

The only certain freedom’s in departure.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

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

Anything more than the truth would be too much.

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor’s point of view.

More men die of worry than of work, because more men worry than work.

The test is always how we treat the poor.

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

I only hope that when I am free, as they are free to go in quest, of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, it may not seem better to me to rest.

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

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day.

Nature’s first green is gold.

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

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be.

A champion of the workingman has never been known to die of overwork.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

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

The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed and while I am making up my bed I am making up my mind as to what kind of a day I am going to have.

Let me be the one To do what is done.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, and wants it down.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

Create and stir other people to create.

I turned to speak to God About the world’s despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn’t there.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

What we live by we die by.

Nothing gold can stay.

Let me be the one To do what is done.

So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

All the fun is in how you say a thing.

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.

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.

There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people.