Robert Frost

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some say when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on, I shall have less to say, But I shall be none.

I don't like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend . . . asked me to go to the top of the Empire State Building once, and I told him that he shouldn't treat New York as a sight-it's feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place else.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been - alone, As all must be, I said within my heart, Whether they work together or apart.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

I hold it the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

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

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.