Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

135 Sourced Quotes

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.
Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.
Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened orange,
Bitter berry now;
Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain-- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.... Kathleen is about to publish a book. If it's a good book, nothing can harm her. If it's a bad book, nothing can help her.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
The younger generation forms a country of its own. It has no geographical boundaries. I've talked with young Hungarians in Budapest, with young Italians in Rome, with young Frenchmen in Paris, and with young people all over.... These young people are going to do things. They are going to change things.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

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

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
That chill is in the air
Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear.
This joy, I know,
Will soon be under snow.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
If ever I said, in grief or pride,
I tired of honest things, I lied.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
"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