Top 100 Edna St Vincent Quotes
#1. If Edna St. Vincent Millay was right and childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies, then my childhood ended when I was fifteen.
Katja Millay
#2. Even after several hospitalizations for alcohol and drug-related nervous breakdowns, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay defined sobriety as restricting her daily intake of liquor to a liter and a half of wine.
Judith Thurman
#3. 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?
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#4. We were all imitative. We all wandered in after Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. We were all being dashing and gallant, declaring we weren't virgins, whether we were or not.
Dorothy Parker
#6. On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed;
But your singing days are done
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#7. But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair, - and the long year remembers you.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#10. The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed
uprooted-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#12. But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#13. It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#14. Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#16. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#18. Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#19. 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!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#22. Lost in Hell,-Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#23. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#24. Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#25. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#29. 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 ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#32. What can I give for
Your knowledge
Of when to expand
And when to contract -
This instructed, more academic college
Of when to act?
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#38. Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#39. Relaxing me from head to feet
Love masters me, the bitter sweet
O'er thy limbs breathing;
Yea, Eros now, the god born blind
Sweeps my soul like the mountain wind
Through the oaks seething.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#40. Let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#44. Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#45. Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#48. And as it went my tortured soul
(...) That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now,
Cool is its hands upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#50. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#51. Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#52. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#53. All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#55. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#56. When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! I had you and I have you now no more.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#57. Heap not on this mound roses that she loved so well; why bewilder her with roses that she cannot see or smell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#58. To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#64. Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#66. Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne's Lace.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#67. If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you? I do not love you Thursday - so much is true.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#68. 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!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#69. All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#70. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#74. 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 !
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#76. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#79. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#80. 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!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#82. I find that I never lose Bach. I don't know why I have always loved him so. Except that he is so pure, so relentless and incorruptible, like a principle of geometry.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#85. 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!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#86. O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#87. Cruel of heart, lay down my song. Your reading eyes have done me wrong. Not for you was the pen bitten, And the mind wrung, and the song written.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#88. Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;
Here might I hope to find you day or night,
And here I come to look for you, my love,
Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#89. The Fugitive"
Thanks be to God the world is wide,
And I am going far from home,
For I forgot in Camelot
The man I loved in Rome,
And I forgot in Kensington
The man I loved in Kew;
And there must be a place for me
To think no more of you.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#93. Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;
Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#97. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#100. 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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