Misattributed
Source: Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
Works
A Few Figs from Thistles
Edna St. Vincent MillayRenascence
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
69
quotes
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likes
Famous Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes
“I know I am but summer to your heart,
and not the full four seasons of the year.”
Source: I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)
Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes about love
"Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April, 1921
Source: Collected Poems
“So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.”
From Sonnet III: "Oh, Think not I am faithful to a vow!", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922) <!-- Not sure whether this appears in the 1920 edition. -->
Context: But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.
Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes about heart
“Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”
Source: The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
"Travel", st. 3, Second April, 1921
Source: The Selected Poetry
"Departure" (1918) from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
“The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide”
"Renascence" (1912), st. 20, Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
Context: 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Trending quotes
“Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.”
Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)
Context: 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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes
“Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath”
"To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April (1921), p. 52
Context: Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.
Sonnet XLIII: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" (1923), Collected Poems", 1931
Context: Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
“But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head”
"Renascence" (1912), st. 3 Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
Context: But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And — sure enough! — I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain”
Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)
Context: 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.
“And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.”
"Renascence" (1912), st. 3 Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
Context: But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And — sure enough! — I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
“The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all.”
Context: The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all. As attributed without citation in At Home by Bill Bryson, Chapter V, "The Scullery and the Larder" p. 111
"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)
“… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over.”
From an October 1930 letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, as variously described by her biographers, e.g.:
[L]ife was not so much "one damn thing after another" as "one damn thing over and over"
As paraphrased ("she had sent [...] a half-comic note, complaining that...") with quoted phrases in Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1969), p. 198
[L]ife isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over
As paraphrased ("she writes that...") and apparently Bowlderized in Miriam Gurko, Restless spirit: the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1962), p. 197
[I]t was not true that life is one damn thing after another — it was one damn thing over and over
As paraphrased ("Edna had written [...] that...") in Joan Dash, A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men they Married (1973), p. 189
The paraphrase by Dash appears to be the origin of later popularly attributed variants, e.g.:
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over.
As attributed without citation in Psychoanalysis Today: A Case Book (1991) by Elizabeth Thorne and Shirley Herscovitch Schaye, p. 93
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same dang thing over and over again.
As attributed without citation in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner
“She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.”
Source: The Selected Poetry
Source: The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Variant: Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
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
Variant: Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.
“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”
Source: "Second Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
Source: Collected Poems
"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)
“And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”
Source: Renascence and Other Poems
“When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more.”
Source: Renascence and Other Poems
Source: Conversation At Midnight
“And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.”
Source: Renascence and Other Poems
From "The Penitent", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922) <!-- Not sure whether this appears in the 1920 edition. -->
Sonnet XXII from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
