As quoted in Bartlett's Book of Love Quotations (1994)
Undated
“Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.”
As quoted in Bartlett's Book of Love Quotations (1994) <!-- cited either to "Comment" or as a comment, this may have been attributed to Frost at least as early as 1962-->
General sources
Context: The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.
Lives of the Poets : The Story of One Thousand Years of English and American Poetry (1959) by Louis Untermeyer
1950s
“One of the most difficult things in the world is to learn to take a hint easily.”
County Town Sayings (1911), p111.
“If I give you a hint and tell you it's a hint, it will be information.”
Source: Howl's Moving Castle
“Mark in the meadows the ruin of Time;
Take the hint, and let life be improv'd in its prime.”
"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley
“It is beginning to be hinted that we are a nation of amateurs.”
Rectorial Address, Glasgow (November 16, 1900), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations…”
You Can Call Me Al
Song lyrics, Graceland (1986)
“Irony is the first hint that consciousness became conscious.”
Ibid., p. 151
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A ironia é o primeiro indício de que a consciência se tornou consciente.
“A part is greater than the whole;
By hints are mysteries told.”
Poems (1869), A Strip of Blue (1870)
Context: A part is greater than the whole;
By hints are mysteries told.
The fringes of eternity, —
God's sweeping garment-fold,
In that bright shred of glittering sea,
I reach out for and hold.
