A Few Figs from Thistles Quotes

“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!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“Second Fig

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“Still must the poet as of old,
In barren attic bleak and cold,
Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to
Such things as flowers and song and you;

Still as of old his being give
In Beauty's name, while she may live,
Beauty that may not die as long
As there are flowers and you and song.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“The Prisoner

All right,
Go ahead!
What's in a name?
I guess I'll be locked into
As much as I'm locked out of!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“You leave me much against my will.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,
As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,
You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb
As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,

But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen and you never will see
Such things as the things that swaddled me!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daugther?”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“All right,
Go ahead!
What's in a name?
I guess I'll be locked into
As much as I'm locked out of!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen
and you never will see
Such things as the things that swaddled me!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles