Robert Frost

You do not have to deserve your mother's love.  You have to deserve your father's.  He's more particular.  

(This is a curious sentiment, but given Frost's sad family history, it is perhaps understandable.  His father, who was an alcoholic, died of tuberculosis when he was only 11, leaving the family with exactly $7.  His mother died of cancer when he 26.  Frost had to commit his younger sister to a mental hospital, where she stayed until her death 9 years later.  Frost and his wife -- she died of heart failure in 1938, 25 years before he died -- had six children.  One daughter died shortly after her birth; another died at age 29 after giving birth.  Frost's oldest son died of cholera at age 8.  Another son committed suicide, while one of the two daughters who outlived Frost was committed to a mental hospital.  Since both Frost and his mother suffered from depression, I'm sure he blamed himself for his children's troubles.) 

Frost's four surviving
children in 1911.