PDA

View Full Version : Help please, Robert Frost experts!



Heidi Mangel
02-22-2012, 12:30 PM
I need the actual source of a quote attributed to Robert Frost in countless places: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. Does anyone know if this was part of a poem, a play, or did he say it in an interview with the media?

sigsjackson
02-23-2012, 11:25 PM
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on."

As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

Heidi Mangel
02-24-2012, 01:29 PM
Do you happen to have Harper's Book of Quotations? If so, does the editor state from which of Robert Frost works the quote comes from?

By the way, Dumb and Dumber is my favorite comedy of all time!

Calidore
02-24-2012, 02:38 PM
That's a pretty tough one. Most books listing the quote don't have the source; the only attribution I could find was a single one for "General Sources." It doesn't seem to appear in any work he himself authored. I'd guess that because it's not attributed anywhere specific by anyone, it was probably a line he tossed off while speaking or something (Pulitzer acceptance maybe?). At any rate, the pros apparently either can't find the source themselves or deem it unnecessary, so you probably don't need to worry about it.

AuntShecky
02-24-2012, 04:09 PM
Are you sure it's from Frost? Samuel Beckett says a very similar thing in Godot and in the final words of his novel trilogy.