Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

I regret everything. But so what? At least I have cause.

Whatever state you find yourself in, you're supposed to be content there.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is, “It’s okay.” It’s okay for me to be kind to myself. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to get mad. It’s ok to be flawed. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to move on.

So we'll just let things take their course, and never be sorry.

Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.

You've achieved cheerfulness the day you realize that no matter what's happening around you, being anything other than cheerful will not make it better.

When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.

Have absolutely no sense of guilt about being happy and successful if you operate honestly and with a sense of social responsibility.

I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this the inability to confront that which is.

There's no "should" or "should not" when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.

I'm really happy with my life now, but there's a lot of stuff I feel very sad about in ways I can't even control.

I choose to surround myself with happy human beings. I went through the angsty period. I think every single person does. I think it's a rite of passage to hate the world and feel like the victim.

No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.

Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband's voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up everything for? This is why you gutted our entire life together? For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper? I replied aloud to him: "First of all," I said, "I'm very sorry, but this isn't your business anymore. And secondly, to answer you question...yes.

Joy is the wild card of life; it supersedes every other formula for success. If you can find a way to create joy, you can rise beyond all external factors. If you can play at whatever you are doing, you are the master of your life.

Don't be afraid to be human - you're human, you're going to have emotional days. You're going to have days when things suck and then some days when things are great, but don't feel guilty because you're experiencing that. Don't feel guilty from being human.

I see no point in being despondent. We might as well enjoy ourselves during our brief tenure of this life.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, It might have been,' More sad are these we daily see: 'It is, but hadn't ought to be!'

One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.

It is OK to be happy in life. Even through all the strife, maybe especially during times of great pain and suffering. We still have to be able to stay close to that joy because we can't save the world in a bad mood.

I never understood the point of being sad when I could choose to be happy

The thing is to be happy, no matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, you're just there, going along easy in the world.

My life is in denial. And when I die, baptized in eternal fire, I'll shed many tears.