Quotations by:
Millay, Edna St. Vincent
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 (1892-1950) American poet
“Interim,” Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
(Source)
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) American poet
“Passer Mortuus Est”, st. 3, Second April (1921)
(Source)
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, “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) American poet
“The Penitent”, st. 3, A Few Figs from Thistles (1921)
(Source)
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“When I too long have looked upon your face,” ll. 5-8, Second April, Sonnet 7 (1921)
(Source)
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
(Attributed)
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.
It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another — it’s one damn thing over & over — there’s the rub — first you get sick — then you get sicker — then you get not quite so sick — then you get hardly sick at all — then you get a little sicker — then you get a lot sicker — then you get not quite so sick — oh, hell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Letter (1930-10-24) to Arthur Davison Ficke
(Source)
See Hubbard, Scalzi.
More information about this quotation: It’s Not True That Life Is One Damn Thing After Another—It’s One Damn Thing Over and Over – Quote Investigator®.
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Letter to Whitter “Hal” Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke (1920)
(Source)
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!
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) American poet
Sonnet 43 “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” ll. 9ff. (1920), The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
(Source)
Originally published in Vanity Fair (1920-11).