Top 215 Quotes & Sayings by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

I see things with my own eyes, just as if they were the first eyes that ever saw, and then I set about to tell, as best I can, just what I've seen.

It is high time we found out about this man Cummings. Let us give him every opportunity to show us at once whether he is a genius, a charlatan, or a congenital defective - and get him off our minds.

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.

My god is all gods in one. When I see a beautiful sunset, I worship the god of Nature; when I see a hidden action brought to light, I worship the god of Truth; when I see a bad man punished and a good man go free, I worship the god of Justice; when I see a penitent forgiven, I worship the god of Mercy.

I've written so many verses and keep on writing so many more that I became afraid that if I didn't write them into one big book, I might forget some of them.

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

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

Music my rampart, and my only one.

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

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.

Some of us have been thinking and talking too long without doing anything. Poems are perfect; picketing, sometimes, is better.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

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

I'm so tired of hearing about 'Renascence,' I'm nearly dead. I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.

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.

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!

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

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

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

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

Night falls fast. Today is in the past.

pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind beholds at every turn.

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!

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

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

Life must go on; I forget just why.

SHE is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

I love humanity but I hate people.

I would blossom if I were a rose.

My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now

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

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.

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.

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

You are loved. If so, what else matters?

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

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

What should I be but just what I am?

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning, but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. 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.

I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear

I am waylaid by beauty.

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

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.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

Pour away despair and rinse the cup. Eat happiness like bread.

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers The dust from which it came.

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

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

Life is a quest and love a quarrel

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.

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!