98 Top Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes For A Better Understanding Of Life

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

Me , Think

  

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.

Like

  

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

Me

  

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.

  

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.

  

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.

  

After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?

  

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

  

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

Life

  

I love humanity but I hate people.

  

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

  

What should I be but just what I am?

  

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Me

  

Night falls fast. Today is in the past. Blown from the dark hill hither to my door Three flakes, then four Arrive, then many more.

  

Ebb 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.

Like

  

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

Never

  

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

  

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

  

Lost in Hell,-Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, "My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here.

  

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

Me

  

Music, my rampart and my only one.

Music

  

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.

Me , Think

  

She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

  

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.

  

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. (in a letter written while she was in college)

Me

  

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.

  

There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.

  

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.

  

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.

Me

  

I know, but I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

  

I would blossom if I were a rose.

  

A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?

  

Life must go on; I forget just why.

Life

  

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.

Me

  

Night falls fast. Today is in the past.

Past

  

That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.

Me

  

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?

  

Guess I'll weep awhile. Guess I won't, I mean.

  

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.

Me

  

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

  

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

Me , Think

  

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.

  

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies.

  

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

  

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

Me

  

And he whose soul is flat -- the sky Will cave in on him by and by.

  

When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more.

  

And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

  

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

  

When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost To haunt the scene where I was happiest To bend above the thing I loved the most

  

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....

Me , Never

  

How first you knew me in a book I wrote, How first you loved me for a written line

Me

  

But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.

Never

  

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

Me

  

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

  

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

  

... but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight

  

Tea was sucha comfort.

  

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

  

Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

  

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.

Life

  

The undercurrent of my every thought: To seek you, find you, have you for my own.

  

But you were something more than young and sweet And fair, - and the long year remembers you.

  

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed; Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme; Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, But climb.

Never

  

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.

  

I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.

  

One things there's no getting by, I've been a wicked girl, Says I... But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

  

...but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply...

  

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

  

Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move; Here might I hope to find you day or night, And here I come to look for you, my love, Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

Time

  

Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.

Time

  

But the roaring of the fire, And the warmth of fur, And the boiling of the kettle Were beautiful to her!

  

Relaxing me from head to feet Love masters me, the bitter sweet O'er thy limbs breathing; Yea, Eros now, the god born blind Sweeps my soul like the mountain wind Through the oaks seething.

Like , Me

  

The younger generation forms a country of its own.

  

Unlike most people, I kept my mouth shut about the man I was living with.

  

Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea.

  

A wind with a wolf's head Howled about our door, And we burned up the chairs And sat upon the floor.

  

Handsome, this day: no matter who has died.

  

So come on out, my dear old sweet Sister, - & we'll open our oysters together.

Together

  

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone: Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

  

I will control myself, or go inside. I will not flaw perfection with my grief. Handsome, this day: no matter who has died.

  

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;

  

I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.

  

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

Life

  

Who's that knocking on my grave and will not let me sleep, a year has one

Me

  

The breath of dying lilies haunted the twilight air.

  

About the trees my arms I wound; Like one going mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky.

  

Into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely

  

Koodaki ghalamroe padshahii ast ke hich kas dar an nakhahad mord

  

The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed uprooted- We shall not feel it again. We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.

  

And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust.

  

Along my body, waking while I sleep, Sharp to the kiss, cold to the hand as snow, The scar of this encounter like a sword

Like

  

Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup,

Life

  

The Prisoner All right, Go ahead! What's in a name? I guess I'll be locked into As much as I'm locked out of!