Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

A wind with a wolf's head
Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
And sat upon the floor.

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

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

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

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

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin.

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

Beauty in all things-no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it.

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

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

Dust in an urn long since, dispersed and dead
Is great Apollo; and the happier he

I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.

All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed ...

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.

Time can make soft that iron wood.

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

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

This my personal death? -
That my lungs be failing
To inhale the breath
Others are exhaling?

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;

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

Lost in Hell,-Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.

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

Although we sometimes did without a few of life's necessities, we rarely lacked for its luxuries.

I will control myself, or go inside.
I will not flaw perfection with my grief.
Handsome, this day: no matter who has died.

Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?

Father, I beg of Thee a little task To dignify my days, 'tis all I ask.

What should I be
but just what I am?

I am not afraid of lawyers as I used to be. They are lambs in wolves' clothing.

The younger generation forms a country of its own.

Evil alone has oil for every wheel.

And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

Along my body, waking while I sleep,
Sharp to the kiss, cold to the hand as snow,
The scar of this encounter like a sword

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.

For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes.

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.

That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.

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

The world stands out on either side, No wider than the heart is wide.

There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.

But the rain Is full of ghosts tonight

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

Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive.

I love humanity but I hate people.

Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness
Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.

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

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

So come on out, my dear old sweet Sister, - & we'll open our oysters together.

You are loved. If so, what else matters?

And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely

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

Unlike most people, I kept my mouth shut about the man I was living with.

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

It may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances.

Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

Life has no friend ...

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

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

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

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 !

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

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

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

Strange how few, After alls said and done, the things that are Of moment.

Life must go on, Though good men die.

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

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

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

Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished?

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

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

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

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.

I screamed, and
lo!
Infinity
Came down and settled over me

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Man has never been the same since God died.

Life isn't all beer and skittles; few of us have touched a skittle in years.

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Music, my rampart and my only one.

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

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.

Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup,

A grave is such a quiet place.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.

I hate people but I love gatherings.

Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne's Lace.

Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down.

Not poppy, nor mandrake, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou owest yesterday.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It's only that.

I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.

Who's that knocking on my grave and will not let me sleep, a year has one

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.

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