Quotes from Edna St. Vincent Millay

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!

Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. / It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, / April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

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

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

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Life is a quest and love a quarrel

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

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

Death devours all lovely things;Lesbia with her sparrowShares the darkness—presentlyEvery bed is narrow.

If ever I said, in grief or pride,I tired of honest things, I lied.

Euclid aloneHas looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate theyWho, though once only and then but far away,Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

We were very tired, we were very merry—We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

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.

All I could see from where I stoodWas three long mountains and a wood.

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlersThe buck in the snow…Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink.

I only know that summer sang in meA little while, that in me sings no more.

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

It's not love's going hurts my days But that it went in little ways.

Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning;

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!

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply...