Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
— Robert Frost
The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.
They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.
I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.
You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.
A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.
A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
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.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
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.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.
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.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
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.
Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
Humor is the most engaging cowardice.
Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.
Nobody was ever meant, To remember or invent, What he did with every cent.
I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.
I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.
You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.
Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
The best way out is always through.
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
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.
