The Road Not Taken Choices Quotes

From this moment, we know that the speaker is going to have to make a choice and walk down one of these roads, leaving the other one behind. This line could represent many different choices in the speaker's life, but he's using a metaphor rather than describing them specifically. This lets us readers think of choices that have been significant in our own lives when we read this poem.

After looking down one path for a long time, our speaker takes the other one. With a choice that is shown to be significant by the end of the poem, this is impulsive and risky. We think that the speaker was a little bored with the path that he was going to take, and wanted to shake things up a little.

Our speaker is no longer so sure about his choice. What he thought made the road he took better – that it was less traveled – now seems untrue, and he's having a hard time reminding himself why he decided to go down that path anyways. But he comforts himself by thinking he can just try the first path on another day. We've all done things like this – like, we can't decide to go on vacation to the beach or the mountains. We choose one and figure we'll get to the other sooner or later.

Despite his efforts to be optimistic and persuade himself that he can take the path he didn't choose on another day, the speaker sees that, realistically, he'll probably never be able to take that path again. There are many decisions in life that just can't be remade. Once you choose, for example, to accept one job offer, you forgo any others. You can try to apply again, but chances are slim a company will want to hire someone who's already turned them down.

These final lines let us know that the speaker's choices were significant. This is not just a choice of which path to walk on a morning stroll, but a choice that determines the direction of the speaker's life. These lines are probably some of the most quoted lines of poetry in this country, and also probably the most misinterpreted. Though they read at first glance to be positive, who's to say that "all the difference" is bad or good? The speaker doesn't even know if he made the right choice yet, because he's forecasting what he'll be saying a long, long time from now and leaving his words ambiguous.