Edna St. Vincent Millay quotes on aging, beauty, books, children, earth, god, grief, hate, death, love, memories, hills, rain, sleep, songs, summer and much more.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was a celebrated American poet, writer and activist who wrote some of the best sonnets in the world. She was honored with many awards for her work. It is a lesser-known fact that she is one of the few female poets to receive the prestigious “Pulitzer Prize for Poetry” for her work ‘The Ballad of the Harp Weaver’. Her novel titled ‘A Few Figs from Thistles’ raised a few eyebrows as it preached about female sexuality and feminism. The general theme of her work was based on individualism and contemplation of oneself through spirituality in the face of oppression due to gender bias. It glorified women rights and feministic approach which inspired many women to view matters of life in a different manner. Her work intended to spark a revolution for changing the mindset of a common man in the society. Even though she died early, her legacy remains forever in the hearts of the womenfolk in her country and all over the globe. Being a noted writer and poet, she shared her thoughts and views on several things. Many of her thoughts have become famous as her quotes and they are quoted extensively. We have compiled Edna St. Vincent Millay’s quotes from her writings, speeches etc. Browse through Edna Millay’s quotes on aging, beauty, books, children, earth, god, grief, hate, death, love, memories, hills, rain, sleep, songs, summer and much more.
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- The Selected Poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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!
- A Few Figs from Thistles, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished;
Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.
- The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.
- The Selected Poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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)
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know, but I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
I would blossom if I were a rose.
- The Lamp and the Bell, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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?
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.
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?
- Mine the Harvest, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
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.
- Collected Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind...
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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....
- Edna St. Vincent Millay: Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair, - and the long year remembers you.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
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.
- The Selected Poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay
I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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 !
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
...but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply...
- Collected Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
The breath of dying lilies haunted the twilight air.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Renascence and Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Koodaki ghalamroe padshahii ast ke hich kas dar an nakhahad mord
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
- Collected Poems: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edna St. Vincent Millay
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
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