Edna St. Vincent Millay
61 quotes
Biography
"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."
"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"
"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."
"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."
"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."
"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!"
"Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely."
"After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?"
"Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn."
"EbbI know what my heart is likeSince your love died:It is like a hollow ledgeHolding a little poolLeft there by the tide,A little tepid pool,Drying inward from the edge."
"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place."
"Music, my rampart and my only one."
"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."
"Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!"
"I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went."
"And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall 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?"
"Second FigSafe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"
"The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty."
"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."
"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."
"… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over."
"Beauty is whatever gives joy."
"Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive."
"God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart."
"Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive."