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Edna St. Vincent Millay
16 quotes
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Renascence" (1912), st. 3 Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Renascence" (1912), st. 20, Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Departure" (1918) from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
“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.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
Also quoted by: Roald Dahl (misattributed)
“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand; Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Second Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
“Many a bard's untimely death Lends unto his verses breath; Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April (1921), p. 52
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From "The Penitent", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922)
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Sonnet III: "Oh, Think not I am faithful to a vow!", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922)
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April, 1921
“My heart is warm with 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.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Travel", st. 3, Second April, 1921
“Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sonnet XXII from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sonnet XLIII: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" (1923), Collected Poems", 1931
“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 (1892–1950) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)
“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. Nobody that matters, that is.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)
“… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an October 1930 letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, as variously described by her biographers, e.g.:
“The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all. As attributed without citation in At Home by Bill Bryson, Chapter V, "The Scullery and the Larder" p. 111”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source