Top 160 Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

103. “Nobody speaks to me. People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me and – and all that sort of thing. But no one speaks to me. I sometimes think that no one can. Can you?”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

104. “I screamed, and – lo! – Infinity Came down and settled over me.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

106. “Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying!”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

107. “What should I be but just what I am?”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

108. “But you were something more than young and sweet And fair, – and the long year remembers you.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

109. “Time can make soft that iron wood.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

110. “I find that I never lose Bach. I don’t know why I have always loved him so. Except that he is so pure, so relentless and incorruptible, like a principle of geometry.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

111. “Oh, you mean I’m a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what’s that got to do with my headache?”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

112. “For the body at best Is a bundle of aches, Longing for rest; It cries when it wakes.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

113. “I would blossom if I were a rose.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

115. “PIERROT: Of course not. There never was. “Moon’s” just a word to swear by. “Mutton!“ – now there’s a thing you can lay the hands on, And set the tooth in! Listen, Columbine: I always lied about the moon and you. Food is my only lust. COLUMBINE: Well, eat it, then, For Heaven’s sake, and stop your silly noise! I haven’t heard the clock tick for an hour.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

116. “Lord, I do fear Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

118. “Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here For age to invest in compromise and fear.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

119. “God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

120. “The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief or grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw, – it must have been Very pretty.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

121. “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

122. “The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

123. “I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it...”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

124. “On and on eternally Shall your altered fluid run, Bud and bloom and go to seed; But your singing days are done.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

125. “When you publish something, it is very much as if you pulled your pants down in public. If what you have written is good, nobody can hurt you; if what you have written is bad, nobody can help you.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

126. “Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply...”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

127. “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!”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

128. “I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, “Someday you must meet my mother.””

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

130. “Here’s a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

131. “Strange how few, After alls said and done, the things that are Of moment.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

132. “I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

133. “O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard, Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

134. “Who’s that knocking on my grave and will not let me sleep, a year has one.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

135. “The most I ever did for you was to outlive you. But that is much.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

136. “He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

137. “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

138. “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

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

140. “I had a little sorrow, Born of a little sin.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

142. “You are loved. If so, what else matters?”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

143. “Man has never been the same since God died.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

145. “That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

147. “Please don’t think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don’t think me either.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

148. “Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust!”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

149. “Death devours all lovely things.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

150. “Longing alone is singer to the lute.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay