Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

135 Sourced Quotes

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
I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
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
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, but climb.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And — sure enough! — I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief or grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sweep the floor, and sweep it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that and every day of your life; — if not that floor, why then — some other floor.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again, — but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn! — What is the Spring to me?

Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Women are
Superior to men in every way,
But chiefly in the intellect.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weeds uprooted—
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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!

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