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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Quotes about love
Edna St. Vincent Millay was American poet. Explore interesting quotes on love.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
138
quotes
9
likes
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.
"Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April, 1921
Source: Collected Poems