20 quotes
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
North of Boston (1914)
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
North of Boston (1914)
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.
North of Boston (1914)
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
North of Boston (1914)
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
North of Boston (1914)
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
North of Boston (1914)
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him.
North of Boston (1914)
I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
North of Boston (1914)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
North of Boston (1914)
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."
North of Boston (1914)
I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets.
It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though:
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
North of Boston (1914)
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
North of Boston (1914)
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
North of Boston (1914)
'My words are nearly always an offense.
I don't know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught,
I should suppose. I can't say I see how.'
North of Boston (1914)
I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too.
North of Boston (1914)
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
North of Boston (1914)
I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.
North of Boston (1914)
He said twice over before he knew himself:
"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"
'Not you!'—'Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.'—
I don't know rightly whether any man can.'
North of Boston (1914)
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
North of Boston (1914)
The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
North of Boston (1914)