From “The Road Not Taken,” first published in The Atlantic Monthly ↗ in August 1915 and collected as the opening poem of Mountain Interval (1916). The quote here compresses Frost’s original two lines — “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by” — into one sentence, dropping the em–dash pause, but the words themselves are genuinely his.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by” Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," Mountain Interval (1916)
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Evoking the world of Robert Frost — American poet, four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, U.S. Poet Laureate (1958–1959). Theme: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by". 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.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by". 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
The source
Work
The Road Not Taken
First published
The Atlantic Monthly, August 1915
Collected in
Mountain Interval (Henry Holt & Co., 1916)
Stanza
Final stanza (of 4)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The popularly quoted single sentence merges lines 18–19 and drops Frost's self-interrupting dash (“and I— / I took”), which in the original marks the speaker's hesitation.
Collected as the opening poem of Mountain Interval (1916); full public-domain text at Project Gutenberg ↗.
Listed as a sourced (non-misattributed) Frost quote on Wikiquote ↗, citing the same 1915 Atlantic Monthly first publication.
Also reproduced at the Academy of American Poets ↗, which notes the poem's inclusion in later Frost collections through the 1920s.
✓Public domain
“The Road Not Taken” was first published in 1915 and collected in Mountain Interval in 1916 — both decades before the United States' rolling 1931 public-domain cutoff — so the poem's text is in the public domain in the U.S., as Wikisource's own edition notes.
Fact-check
Often misattributed
Frost genuinely wrote these words, but the poem has two persistent problems: how it's quoted, and how it's read.
✕
WordingPopular quotation Compressed
The line is usually quoted as a single sentence, but Frost's original breaks it in two, with a self-interrupting dash: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by,” confirmed in the Project Gutenberg ↗ text of Mountain Interval.
✕
MeaningGeneral readership Misread
The poem is widely treated as an anthem for individualism and nonconformity. But earlier in the same poem the two roads are described as worn “really about the same,” and per Wikipedia ↗, Frost himself reportedly warned audiences, “You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem — very tricky.”
✓The words are genuinely Robert Frost's, from “The Road Not Taken,” first published in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1915) and collected in Mountain Interval (1916) — see Wikiquote ↗. What's misattributed isn't the authorship — it's the meaning.
Context
A poem written as a private joke that became a public anthem
Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” partly as a gentle tease aimed at his friend Edward Thomas, a fellow poet given to agonizing over path choices on their walks together in England. Frost sent Thomas an advance copy after returning to New Hampshire in 1915; according to Wikipedia ↗, biographer Matthew Hollis has argued Thomas took the poem seriously and personally, and it may have influenced his decision to enlist in World War I.
Despite the poem's ironic setup — the speaker admits the two roads are worn about the same, then predicts he will later claim, with a sigh, to have taken the less-traveled one — it has become one of the most-quoted celebrations of individual choice in American culture, appearing on graduation cards and motivational posters far removed from its original, wistfully self-mocking tone.
You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem — very tricky.
Read the full story
Textual note: between the August 1915 Atlantic Monthly printing and the 1916 Mountain Interval version, Frost made small revisions — changing “marked” to “kept” in line 13 and a comma to a dash at the end of line 18 — per Wikipedia's account of the poem's textual history.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1874–1963 · American poet, four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, U.S. Poet Laureate (1958–1959)
Robert Frost was one of the most celebrated American poets of the twentieth century, known for using plain, colloquial New England speech to explore weighty questions of choice, isolation, and nature. “The Road Not Taken” became his signature poem — and, by his own admission, one of his most misread.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916. First published in The Atlantic Monthly, August 1915.
MLA (9th ed.)
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Mountain Interval, Henry Holt and Company, 1916.
APA (7th ed.)
Frost, R. (1916). The road not taken. In Mountain interval. Henry Holt and Company. (Original work published 1915)
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/two-roads-diverged-in-a-wood-and-i-took-the-one-less