Elinor Wylie Quotes & Sayings

An old earthen pipe like myself is dry and thirsty and so a most voracious drinker of life at its source; I'm no more to be split by the vital stream than if I were stone or steel. — Elinor Wylie

If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now. — Elinor Wylie

When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,
We shall live well
we shall live very well. — Elinor Wylie

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There's something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. — Elinor Wylie

I have never cared very deeply about the actual taste of my work. Let its essential odor satisfy my mind and senses, and I am content. I rarely judge by the grosser test of actual gustation ... in cooking, to create a masterpiece for the nose alone - that is exquisite, that is Art! — Elinor Wylie

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose. — Elinor Wylie

In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile. — Elinor Wylie

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong. — Elinor Wylie

The bird Imagination, That flies so far, that dies so soon; Her wings are colored like the sun, Her breast is colored like the moon. — Elinor Wylie

I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting. — Elinor Wylie

I bear a little more than I can bear. — Elinor Wylie

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over. — Elinor Wylie

If you would keep your soul
From spotted sight or sound,
Live like the velvet mole;
Go burrow underground. — Elinor Wylie

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get. — Elinor Wylie

My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where
I bear a little more than I can bear. — Elinor Wylie

I shall lie folded like a saint,
Lapped in a scented linen sheet,
On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint,
Narrow and cold and neat. — Elinor Wylie