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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Pour away despair and rinse the cup. Eat happiness like bread.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
We shall hardly notice in a year or two.
You can get accustomed to anything.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.

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

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
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined, Wisdom enough to leach us of our ill Is daily spun; but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric.

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

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

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

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

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
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