Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963 ) was one of America’s leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Frost wrote poems often associated with rural New England, whose philosophical dimensions transcended both traditional and experimental, regional and universal. After his father’s death in 1885, the family left California and settled in Massachusetts. Frost attended high school in that state, entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught school and worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. From 1897 to 1899 he attended Harvard College but left without a degree. Over the next ten years he wrote, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.
In 1912, he sold the farm and used the proceeds to take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing. His efforts to establish himself and his work were almost immediately successful. The Frosts sailed back for the United States in 1915. The proceeds from his early books enabled Frost to buy a farm in Franconia, N.H., to place new poems in literary periodicals and to continue publishing. Frost embarked on a long career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. In 1924 he received a Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Over the years he received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic, and public honors. Robert Frost is buried in Bennington Vermont in the cemetery at the First Congregational Church (See Story Entitled Road Trip).
“Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.”
“Two roads diverge in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
“To be social is to be forgiving.”
“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.”
“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”
“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
“Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.”
“You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.”