Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotations

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light!

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

Not Truth, but Faith it is that keeps the world alive.

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak ...

Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom, golden in the green grass, This life can be. Common as a dandelion-blossom, beautiful in the clean grass, not beautiful Because common, beautiful because beautiful, Noble because common, because free.

Spring TO what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

There are a hundred places where I fear To go, --so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!

For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire, – Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each, — then mourned for all!

A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?

Guess I'll weep awhile. Guess I won't, I mean.

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost To haunt the scene where I was happiest To bend above the thing I loved the most

One things there's no getting by, I've been a wicked girl, Says I... But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust!

Life must go on, Though good men die.

Evil alone has oil for every wheel.

Martyred many times must be Who would keep his country free.

Life has no friend ...

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.

Progress-progress is the dirtiest word in the language-who ever told us- And made us believe it-that to take a step forward was necessarily, was always A good idea?

Man has never been the same since God died.

But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.

But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide! There are a hundred places where I fear To go,--so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears, ...

When you publish something, it is very much as if you pulled your pants down in public. If what you have written is good, nobody can hurt you; if what you have written is bad, nobody can help you.

This have I known always: Love is no more than the wide blossom which the wind assails, than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn, that the swift mind beholds at every turn.

I hate people but I love gatherings.

But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!

Death devours all lovely things.

After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.

We were so wholly one I had not thought That we could die apart. I had not thought That I could move,—and you be stiff and still! That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb! I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof In some firm fabric, woven in and out; Your golden filaments in fair design Across my duller fibre.

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note In me a beauty that was never mine, How first you knew me in a book I wrote, How first you loved me for a written line....

There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind...

And he whose soul is flat -- the sky Will cave in on him by and by.

Night falls fast. Today is in the past. Blown from the dark hill hither to my door Three flakes, then four Arrive, then many more.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning, but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

I would blossom if I were a rose.

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now

I know, but I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,-- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad. And, "One thing there's no getting by -- I've been a wicked girl," said I; But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!

If ever I said in grief or pride, I'd tired of honest things, I lied.

I had a little sorrow, Born of a little sin.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

It's not love's going hurts my days But that it went in little ways.

Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply....

Life is a quest and love a quarrel

Heap not on this mound roses that she loved so well; why bewilder her with roses that she cannot see or smell.

I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst.

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You.

If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you? I do not love you Thursday - so much is true.

Let us not forget such words, and all they mean, as hatred, bitterness, and rancor greed, intolerance, bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to man, his right to be himself and free.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here For age to invest in compromise and fear.

The only people I really hate are servants. They're not really human beings at all.

I make bean stalks, I'm A builder, like yourself.

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour falls from the sky a meteoric shower of facts; They lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun, But there exists no loom to weave it into fabric.

Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart. I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And I lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain.

I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more.

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

I will come back to you, I swear I will; And you will know me still. I shall be only a little taller Than when I went.

... but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight

But you were something more than young and sweet And fair, - and the long year remembers you.

SHE is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

The fabric of my faithful love No power shall dim or ravel Whilst I stay here - but oh, my dear, If I should ever travel!

I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.

The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

[L]ife isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over

It's little I know what's in my heart,What's in my mind it's little I know,But there's that in me must up and start,And it's little I care where my feet go.

Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink.