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Who really said it

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

Not Robert Frost — an anonymous banking proverb Unknown — the saying is anonymous Kernel in print by 1905 · full saying circulating anonymously by 1930
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator traces the idea to an unnamed bank customer quoted in The Accountant (London) on 15 April 1905, and the full saying to anonymous print in 1930; Barry Popik records this near-exact wording running unattributed in the Ottawa Citizen on 24 October 1934. Robert Frost’s name was first attached in 1949, when the quotation compiler Evan Esar credited him in The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations — a reference-book ascription with no source behind it, and none has ever been found in Frost’s poems, prose, letters or recorded talks.

Last verified 9 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain” not Robert Frost. It is an anonymous banking proverb. Quote Investigator traces the idea to a bank customer quoted in The Accountant (London), 15 April 1905, and the full saying to anonymous print by 1930; Barry Popik records this wording unattributed in the Ottawa Citizen, 24 October 1934. Frost's name first appears on it in Evan Esar's Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949). Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Philip La Follette have all been credited too. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Robert Frost. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of power, truth and character. Theme: "A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the saying actually comes from

Earliest instance (per Quote Investigator)
The Accountant, London, 15 April 1905 — the idea, credited to an unnamed bank customer
Full saying, still anonymous
The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, January 1930 — introduced as the work of “some person of shrewd wit”
This wording, unattributed
Ottawa Citizen, 24 October 1934, page 19 (recorded by Barry Popik)
First credited to Robert Frost
The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Evan Esar, 1949

Some person of shrewd wit has given a definition of a banker which, though a bit severe, nevertheless strikes a responsive chord. A banker, according to this definition, is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and insists upon its return as soon as it starts to rain. January 1930 — still anonymous

From Lionel D. Edie’s article on the 1929 crash in The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, as reproduced by Quote Investigator ↗. Note what the writer does not do: an economist introducing the saying in 1930 credits it to “some person of shrewd wit” rather than to a famous name — because in 1930 there was no famous name to credit.

Quote Investigator — the full 1905–1999 chronology

The paper trail

  • 1905 — the earliest instance Quote Investigator found is not a quip by anyone famous but a complaint: a chartered accountant’s paper in The Accountant (London) reports a customer telling him, “You bankers only lend a man an umbrella when it is a fine day” — see the citation ↗.
  • 1930 — the saying reaches its modern shape in two independent printings that year, in The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago and The International Digest, both presenting it as an anonymous jest rather than anyone’s line — both reproduced by QI ↗.
  • 1934 — the wording asked about here appears almost verbatim in the Ottawa Citizen of 24 October, with no author named at all, in Barry Popik’s citation file ↗.
  • 1944, then 1949 — Bennett Cerf hands the joke to Mark Twain in Try and Stop Me; five years later Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations splits the honours, giving one version to Twain and this one to Robert Frost. That entry is the origin of the Frost credit, and it cites nothing — QI reproduces both entries ↗.

No rights status can honestly be asserted for this wording. The saying is anonymous: the versions that are safely out of copyright — the 1905 remark in The Accountant and the 1930 printings — are worded differently from the line asked about here, while this phrasing is first documented in an unattributed 1934 newspaper item and, in its Frost-credited form, in Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations of 1949, a compilation published in copyright. With no identifiable author and no single work that can be called its first publication, quotle.info makes no public-domain claim.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Four famous names, none of them the author

This is a proverb that collects celebrities. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows the saying in circulation for decades before any famous person was named, after which compilers and columnists attached whichever wit came to mind.

Robert Frost Credited from 1949

The credit begins with Evan Esar’s The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949), which gave Twain one version and Frost another — “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain” — with no source attached, as Quote Investigator documents ↗. Barry Popik’s file shows the same wording running in the Ottawa Citizen in 1934 with nobody’s name on it, and a 1950 banking handbook repeating the Frost credit only as what the poet “is quoted as having described” — second-hand from the start.

Mark Twain Credited from 1944

Bennett Cerf put it in Twain’s mouth in Try and Stop Me (1944), five years before Esar reached Frost. Twain’s own custodians reject it: TwainQuotes ↗ files the line with the note that until the attribution can be verified, “the quote should not be regarded as authentic.”

Ambrose Bierce Credited in 1999

Ben Bernanke and Mark Gertler credited Bierce in a 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City paper — the saying’s highest-status outing, and still an attribution QI finds no basis for ↗.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Philip La Follette Also claimed

Barry Popik’s chronology records the line credited to Emerson in a 1984 American Bar Association Journal piece and to the former Wisconsin governor Philip La Follette in a 1987 history of the Cleveland City Club — four claimants for one anonymous joke ↗.

Quote Investigator’s conclusion is blunt: “the first instances of this maxim are anonymous. Years later, famous people such as Mark Twain, Robert Frost, and Ambrose Bierce were implausibly attached to the quotation” — read the full chronology ↗.

Context

Why this joke keeps coming back

The saying survives because it is the shortest true thing anyone has said about secured lending: credit is easiest to get when you least need it. That is why it has been redeployed in every downturn since the 1930s — and why it keeps acquiring a famous signature, because a line that good feels like it must belong to someone.

It has been laundered through serious writing too. In a 1999 Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City paper on monetary policy and asset prices, Ben Bernanke and Mark Gertler used the adage to illustrate credit-market frictions — and credited it to the satirist Ambrose Bierce, a fourth name with no better claim than Frost’s.

Some person of shrewd wit has given a definition of a banker.

The wording you have is itself a trimmed variant

Evan Esar’s 1949 entry, as reproduced by Quote Investigator ↗, reads “ask for it back again when it begins to rain.” The version that circulates today has quietly dropped the “again.” So the string most often presented as a Robert Frost quotation is not even identical to the only Frost-credited wording anyone has ever documented.

The 1934 Ottawa Citizen printing recorded by Barry Popik ↗ ends “ask for it back the moment it begins to rain,” with no author’s name at all — the ordinary behaviour of a proverb, which drifts in wording precisely because nobody owns it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Truth Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: A Banker Lends You His Umbrella When It's Sunnyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Full dated chronology from the 1905 Accountant remark through the 1930 anonymous printings, Bennett Cerf's 1944 Twain credit, Evan Esar's 1949 Frost entry and Bernanke's 1999 Bierce credit, with the verdict that all the famous names were "implausibly attached."
Barry Popik: "A banker lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining…"barrypopik.com

The parallel citation file QI itself credits. Calls the saying "of unknown authorship," lists Emerson, Twain, Frost and Philip La Follette as claimants, and carries the 24 October 1934 Ottawa Citizen printing of this exact wording with no author attached.
TwainQuotes: Bankertwainquotes.com

Barbara Schmidt's Mark Twain quotation directory files the umbrella line with an explicit authenticity warning — the rival celebrity attribution fails its own custodian's test.
Wikiquote: Robert Frosten.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's Frost page — checked 9 September 2026, the banker/umbrella line appears nowhere on it, in the sourced sections or any other.
Wikipedia: Robert Frosten.wikipedia.org

Biography of the poet whose name the saying acquired: born San Francisco 26 March 1874, died Boston 29 January 1963, the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Goodreads: the quote, credited to Frost with no sourcewww.goodreads.com

A live example of how the attribution travels: the line under Frost's name with no citation, above Goodreads' own notice that community-added quotes are not verified.

Popularly credited — but not the source

About the poet whose name got attached

Robert Frost

1874–1963 · American poet · four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on 26 March 1874 and died in Boston on 29 January 1963. He remains the only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry — for New Hampshire (1924), Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937) and A Witness Tree (1943) — and wrote “The Road Not Taken,” “Mending Wall” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” At 86 he appeared at John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration, where sunlight on the page defeated him and he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory instead. None of that includes the banker joke. Frost wrote about walls, woods and work, not about credit markets, and the saying was already old and unsigned before any compiler thought to put his name on it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this page

Earliest instance of the underlying saying, per Quote Investigator: John Moodie, “Notes on a Banker’s Accounts,” The Accountant (London), 15 April 1905, 464 — “You bankers only lend a man an umbrella when it is a fine day,” there credited to an unnamed customer. The Robert Frost ascription first appears in Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949). Chronology: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: A Banker Lends You His Umbrella When It’s Sunny and Wants It Back When It Rains,” 7 April 2011, quoteinvestigator.com ↗.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-bank-is-a-place-where-they-lend-you-an-umbrella-in-fair/

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