1. “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”
2. “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
3. “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”
4. "A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes."
5. "An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor."
6. “Any work of art must first of all tell a story.”
7. ”[A poem] begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
8. “A poem begins with a lump in the throat.”
9. ”By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”
10. "Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
11. "Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better."
12. “Educations is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence.”
13. “Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
14. “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
15. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
16. "Heaven gives its glimpses only to those not in position to look too close." ‘
17. "Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
18. "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in."
19. “I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”
20. “I am not a teacher but an awakener.”
21. "I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed."
22. “I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better.”
23. ”I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”
24. ”I had withdrawn in forest, and my songWas swallowed up in leaves that blew away;And to the forest edge you came one day(this was my dream) and looked and pondered long,But did not enter, though the wish was strong:You shook your pensive head as who should say,"I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray--He must seek me would he undo the wrong."Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all,Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;And the sweet pang it cost me not to calland tell you that I saw does still abide.But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.”
25. "I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way."
26. “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.”
27. ”It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.”
28. "Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on."
29. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
30. ”Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.”
31. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”
32. ”Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
33. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
34. “Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.”
35. "Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found it was ourselves."
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.”
36. ”Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds.”
37. “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.”
38. “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
39. "The only way around is through."
40. ”The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.”
41. “The rain to the wind said,"You push and I'll pelt."They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually kneltAnd lay lodged - though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.”
42. “There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.”
43. "The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them."
44. "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."
45. "Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That is voting."
46. ”To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
47. "To be social is to be forgiving."
48. ”Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.”
49. “We dance round in a ring and suppose,But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
50. ”When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloudAnd goes down burning into the gulf below,No voice in nature is heard to cry aloudAt what has happened. Birds, at least must knowIt is the change to darkness in the sky.Murmuring something quiet in her breast,One bird begins to close a faded eye;Or overtaken too far from his nest,Hurrying low above the grove, some waifSwoops just in time to his remembered tree.At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!Now let the night be dark for all of me.Let the night bee too dark for me to seeInto the future. Let what will be, be.'
51. "We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."
52. "Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough, and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor."
53. "You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country."
