Quotes from 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!

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

And what are you that, missing you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that's a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women's ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?

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

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.

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

Life isn't all beer and skittles; few of us have touched a skittle in years.

Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin.

Life isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over.