Quotes from Elinor Wylie

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.

If any has a stone to throw It is not I ever or now.

When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well--we shall live very well.

My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where I bear a little more than I can bear.

An old earthen pipe like myself is dry and thirsty and so a most voracious drinker of life at its source; I'm no more to be split by the vital stream than if I were stone or steel.

The worst and best are both inclinedTo snap like vixens at the truth;But, O, beware the middle mindThat purrs and never shows a tooth!

Honeyed words like bees,Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

If you would keep your soulFrom spotted sight or sound,Live like the velvet mole;Go burrow underground.And there hold intercourseWith roots of trees and stones,With rivers at their source,And disembodied bones.

If any have a stone to throwIt is not I, ever or now.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:Wherever we goSilence will fall like dewsOn white silence below.

The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong.

I love bright words, words up and singing early; Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing; Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees; I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly, Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

I was, being human, born alone; I am, being woman, hard beset; I live by squeezing from a stone The little nourishment I get.

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.

The icicles wreathing On trees in festoon Swing, swayed to our breathing: They're made of the moon.

Avoid the reeking herd, Shun the polluted flock, Live like that stoic bird, The eagle of the rock.

The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be

If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now.

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There's something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.