Quotes & Sayings About Edna's Death

And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death. — Edna Ferber

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is Not All
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.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

When We That Wore the Myrtle Wear the Dust

When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust,
And years of darkness cover up our eyes,
And all our arrogant laughter and sweet lust
Keep counsel with the scruples of the wise;
When boys and girls that now are in the loins
Of croaking lads, dip oar into the sea, -
And who are these that dive for copper coins?
No longer we, my love, no longer we -
Then let the fortunate breathers of the air,
When we lie speechless in the muffling mould,
Tease not our ghosts with slander, pause not there
To say that love is false and soon grows cold,
But pass in silence the mute grave of two
Who lived and died believing love was true. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Death in its way comes just as much of a surprise as birth. — Edna O'Brien

her untimely death. Death for her meant death for us both. — Edna O'Brien

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Spring
TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death. — Edna Ferber

And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Death devours all lovely things. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle. — Edna Ferber

It is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night. — Edna O'Brien

Promiscuity is the death of love. — Edna O'Brien

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death. — Edna Ferber

Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness
presently
Every bed is narrow. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death-- fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant." --Edna Ferber

"The great gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites. It gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination." --Elizabeth Hardwick — Cara Swann

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made.
-The Gay Old Dog — Edna Ferber

Life is a death-defying experience. — Edna Buchanan

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow ... Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Most Wicked Words!-Forbear to Speak Them Out

Most wicked words!-forbear to speak them out.
Utter them not again; blaspheme no more
Against our love with maxims learned from Doubt:
Lest Death should get his foot inside the door.
We are surrounded by a hundred foes;
And he that at your bidding joins our feast,
I stake my heart upon it, is one of those,
Nor in their councils does he sit the least.
Hark not his whisper: he is Time's ally,
Kinsman to Death, and leman of Despair:
Believe that I shall love you till I die;
Believe; and thrust him forth; and arm the stair;
And top the walls with spikes and splintered glass
That he pass gutted should again he pass. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life must go on, Though good men die. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I would not leave a mother alone in her plight. They described how she had kept the news of my brother's death from our ailing father and on the evening that he was brought home, chapel bells rang out and kept ringing in honor of him, his valor, and my father kept asking if it was a bishop or something that was visiting the parish, not knowing that it was his own son. — Edna O'Brien

Siege

This I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.

White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god, -
Maybe next year, when I'm richer -
Carved beads and a lotus pod...

And all this time
Death beating the door in. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous. — Edna O'Brien

This my personal death? -
That my lungs be failing
To inhale the breath
Others are exhaling? — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll. — Edna St. Vincent Millay