Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.
Death is only an old door set in a garden wall.
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another- it is one damn thing over and over.
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
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.
Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.
Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world- it is thin.
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
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(October 19 is also the birthday of John le Carré and Lewis Mumford.)
Categories: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Quotes of the day
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