"One thing there's no getting by - I've been a wicked girl." said I; "But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!"

"The Penitent", A Few Figs from Thistles - 1922.

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... 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.: Life 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 Life 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, It 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 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. It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over again. As attributed without citation in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes - 1992 by Carolyn Warner

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After all, my earstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished?

"Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April - 1921.

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Many a bard's untimely death Lends unto his verses breath; Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.

"To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April‎ - 1921.

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Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

Sonnet XLIII: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" - 1923, Collected Poems", 1931

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Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing.

Sonnet XXII from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems - 1923.

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But you are mobile as the veering air, And all your charms more changeful than the tide, Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: I have but to continue at your side. So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, I am most faithless when I most am true.

Sonnet III: "Oh, Think not I am faithful to a vow!", A Few Figs from Thistles - 1922.

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My heart is warm with friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.

"Travel", st. 3, Second April - 1921

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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.

Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview - 1931.

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Childhood is not from birth to a certain age And at a certain age the child is grown, And puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-3, from Wine from These Grapes - 1934.

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