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.

No checked Frost publication or recorded statement has been identified. Quote Investigator finds a partial form in John Moodie’s 1905 banking paper, a full weather-and-return form anonymously quoted by Lionel D. Edie in January 1930, and a Frost credit in Esar’s 1949 dictionary. The original author and the first exact use of Esar’s bank wording remain unknown; Esar is an attribution witness, not proof that Frost said it. North of Boston, Mountain Interval and New Hampshire were searched in English for umbrella and banker with no matches; that is not a search of all Frost. The historical printings below were checked through Quote Investigator, not their originals. TwainQuotes independently warns that the Twain attribution is unverified.

1. 15 April 1905Before it · credited to An unnamed customerJohn Moodie quotes an unnamed customer comparing a banker’s loans with an umbrella offered only in fine weather.John Moodie, Notes on a Banker’s Accounts, The Accountant, 15 April 1905; paper read to the Manchester Chartered Accountants Society on 10 March 1905, 464, column 1. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. January 1930Earliest found · credited to no oneThe earliest full lend-and-reclaim form found by Quote Investigator is quoted without an author by Lionel D. Edie.Lionel D. Edie, The Banks and the Stock Market Crisis of 1929, The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, vol. 3, no. 1 (January 1930), 21. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
3. 1949Credited to Robert FrostThe earliest Frost credit located by Quote Investigator appears in Esar’s quotation dictionary, which also contains a Twain entry for the joke.Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Doubleday, 1949); 1989 Dorset Press reprint, Frost and Twain entries, pp. 78 and 200 in the 1989 reprint cited by Quote Investigator. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

A banking joke compares a fair-weather loan with an umbrella supplied only when it is not needed. Esar’s 1949 dictionary is the earliest Frost attribution located by Quote Investigator, which also finds the saying credited to Twain. The underlying joke was in print before either of those credits.

A lender is readier to help the financially secure than someone whose need or risk has increased.

Money

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• quoteinvestigator.com/2011/04/07/banker-umbrella
• twainquotes.com/Banker.html
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Robert_Frost

“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.” Attributed to Robert Frost. No. The Frost credit is unverified. A related banking joke appeared in 1905, and a fuller form circulated anonymously by 1930; a 1949 quotation dictionary later credited Frost without establishing his authorship. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/a-bank-lends-you-an-umbrella-in-fair-weather/ (checked 22 October 2026).

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