Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes - Page 4

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

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.

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You.

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.

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 shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,-- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

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.

I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst.

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

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

Marriage...one of the most civilized institutions in the world...But...swimming is one of the most wonderful of sports, and yet there are always some people who cannot swim who insist on going into the water and getting drowned. Many people spoil marriage in a like manner. One should be sure she knows how to be married before rushing into it.

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.

All my life, Following Care along the dusty road, Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed.

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!

If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun.

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.

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

Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom, golden in the green grass, This life can be. Common as a dandelion-blossom, beautiful in the clean grass, not beautiful Because common, beautiful because beautiful, Noble because common, because free.

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

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain-- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.