Top 215 Quotes & Sayings by Edna St. Vincent Millay - Page 2

Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either.

And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it.

Without music I should wish to die.

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.

Ah, drink again This river that is the taker-away of pain, And the giver-back of beauty! In these cool waves What can be lost?-- Only the sorry cost Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself! The level flood that laves The hot brow And the stiff shoulder Is at our temples now. Gone is the fever, But not into the river; Melted the frozen pride, But the tranquil tide Runs never the warmer for this, Never the colder. Immerse the dream. Drench the kiss. Dip the song in the stream.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadows of the trees, - Things that you could not spare And live, or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there, A man no longer what he was, Not yet the thing he planned.

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

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you all through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?- And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?

Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?

To a Young Poet Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird. Bird and wing together Go down, one feather. No thing that ever flew, Not the lark, not you, Can die as others do.

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

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.

For the body at best Is a bundle of aches, Longing for rest; It cries when it wakes.

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.

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,-- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

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.

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast; So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.

Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.

Heap not on this mound roses that she loved so well; why bewilder her with roses that she cannot see or smell.

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour falls from the sky a meteoric shower of facts; They lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun, But there exists no loom to weave it into fabric.

I have loved badly, loved the great Too soon, withdrawn my words too late; And eaten in an echoing hall Alone and from a chipped plate The words that I withdrew too late.

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears.

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!

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

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

Man has never been the same since God died.

I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

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.

For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire, – Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each, — then mourned for all!

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand. Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

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

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.

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

And what are you that, missing you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women’s ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?

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

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.

Not poppy, nor mandrake, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou owest yesterday.

I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, "Someday you must meet my mother."

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.

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.

Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!

If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun.

Not for the flag Of any land because myself was born there Will I give up my life. But I will love that land where man is free, And that will I defend.

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

Marriage...one of the most civilized institutions in the world...But...swimming is one of the most wonderful of sports, and yet there are always some people who cannot swim who insist on going into the water and getting drowned. Many people spoil marriage in a like manner. One should be sure she knows how to be married before rushing into it.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide! 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!

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies.

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind.

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

Life isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over.