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How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

— Robert Frost

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Quoted in Louis Untermeyer, Lives of the Poets: The Story of One Thousand Years of English and American Poetry (1959)
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Robert Frost

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957)

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

A Boy's Will (1913)

It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Say something to us that we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

A Witness Tree (1942)

We love the things we love for what they are.

Mountain Interval (1916)

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)

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Topics

Nature

More quotes by Robert Frost

Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.

Preface to A Way Out: A One-act Play (1929)

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.

In the Clearing (1962)

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

North of Boston (1914)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.

All Robert Frost quotes →

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The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Frost (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.