The Plain Dealer (1677), Prologue.
“Some condemnations praise; some praise damns.”
Il y a des reproches qui louent et des louanges qui médisent.
Maxim 148.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“… 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
“Life is just one damn thing after another.”
Attributed in Items of Interest, Vol. 33 (1911), p. 8
“… the dogma that History is just "one damned thing after another…."”
"Law and Freedom in History," <i>A Study of History</i>, Vol. 2 (1957). The embedded quotation is attributable to Elbert Hubbard.
“Life isn’t like coursework, baby. It’s one damn essay crisis after another.”
"Exams work because they're scary", Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2005, p. 22.
2000s, 2005
Gavin Stevens in Ch. 8
The two lines quoted — not altogether accurately — are from A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896), XVIII:<p>And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain.
The Town (1957)
To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1724/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
