"Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on."

"If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom."

"Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with."

"If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia."

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

"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things."

"The only way round is through."

"No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard."

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

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

"The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything."

"They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true."

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

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

"If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving."

"I turned to speak to God About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there"

"There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies."

"Education is hanging around until you've caught on."

"College is a refuge from hasty judgment."

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

"Humor is the most engaging cowardice."

"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

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

"I had a lovers quarrel with the world."

"Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting."

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

"There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."

"Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend"

"I am glad the invitation pleases your family. It will please my family to the fourth generation and my family of friends and, were they living, it would have pleased inordinately the kind of Grover Cleveland Democrats I had for parents."

"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."

"A man will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body -- the wishbone."

"What is this talked-of mystery of birth but being mounted bareback on the earth?"

"Time and Tide wait for no man,but time always stands still for a woman of thirty."

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

"Some say the world will end in fire,/ Some say in ice./ From what I've tasted of desire/ I hold with those who favor fire./ But if it had to perish twice,/ I think I know enough of hate/ To say that for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice."

"You have freedom when you're easy in your harness."

"You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider."

"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."

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

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

"Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country."

"The land was ours before we were the land's."

"We dance around the ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows"

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

"Lovers, forget your love And list to the love of these She a window flower And he a winter breeze ..."

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

"I always entertain great hopes."

"I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."