Quote Of The Day By Robert Frost: 'Two Roads Diverged In A Wood...'

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There's an American poem that likely turns up in more graduation speeches and motivational posters than any other. And even though it started as a private joke that its author never meant anyone to take seriously, it has become the definitive byword for making bold life choices.

The man behind it, Robert Frost, was an American poet known for his relatable observations about everyday life, with prose that made philosophical truths sound like front-porch smalltalk. He was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. His father died in 1885, and that sent the family moving across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Frost sold his first poem, "My Butterfly," to the New York Independent magazine for $15. He later moved to England in 1912 with his own family, and his first official poetry collection was published the year after. He remains the only poet with four Pulitzer Prizes to his name. The twists and turns of his life were many — a father lost at 11; two Ivy League stints abandoned; a failed run at chicken farming; years of obscurity before finding fame; enduring the deaths of four of his six children; and losing his wife, Elinor, in 1938 — which is why few writers understood better how the paths we choose can define a lifetime, and why we've singled out his famous poem for today's quote of the day.

Robert Frost ended his 1915 poem "The Road Not Taken" with the lines: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference."

Frost composed the poem to needle his close friend, the poet Edward Thomas. On their rambles through the English countryside, Thomas dithered at every fork, and then wondered if they'd make the right choice. Frost mailed Thomas a draft in 1915, expecting a laugh. His friend took it at face value, missing the irony of the tone. And so has practically everybody since. Because those three simple lines — conceived as an inside joke — contain a whole philosophy of choice.

On its surface, and read alone without the earlier stanzas, the quote is a battle cry for individualists who want to pick the unpopular path and ignore the crowd. But the poem actually concedes that the two roads were essentially identical: "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." Frost himself cautions audiences about jumping to the same conclusion. "You have to be careful of that one, it's a tricky poem — very tricky," he said, per Lawrance Thompson's "Selected Letters of Robert Frost."

The road less traveled, then, never really existed. People write the legend of their bold choices after the fact, and the fork mattered less than the story the traveller tells "ages and ages hence." Of course, for people happy to take a little liberty with the text, Frost's own life of walking away from Dartmouth and Harvard and wagering everything on a move to England might be validating. So maybe, we should take the quote both ways — no pun intended. When you get an unconventional choice, a gamble can pay off. And when two options look about the same, remember that it is you who ultimately decides what the choice means.

• " ... the best way out is always through."
• "'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.'"
• "He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'"
• "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep."
• "In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."