Back to People
Emily Dickinson Quotes
“Fortune befriends the bold.”
“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”
“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”
“They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.”
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.”
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
“Saying nothing... sometimes says the most.”
“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.”
“Beauty is not caused. It is.”
“My friends are my estate.”
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
“There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.”
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”
“How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!”
“Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.”
“I dwell in possibility.”
“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”
“Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”
“Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.”
“If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.”
“Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.”
“Where thou art, that is home.”
“Forever is composed of nows.”
“I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.”
“Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.”
“I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.”
“It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
“That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.”
“Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.”
“Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.”
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.”
“Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
“Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.”
“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.”
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”
“I'm nobody, who are you?”
“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”
“Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.”
“I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.”
“I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.”
“I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what”
“Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.”
“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
“In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.”
“To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
“Tell the truth, but tell it slant.”
“Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.”
“Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.”
“I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.”
“Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.”
“Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!”
“The brain is wider than the sky.”
“We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.”
“They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.”
“He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.”
“I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.”
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.”
“God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.”
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
“A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.”
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
“I dwell in possibility…”
“Nature is a haunted house, but Art is a house that tries to be haunted.”
“Bring me the sunset in a cup.”
“Pardon my sanity in a world insane.”
“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
“The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care.”
“Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.”
“Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.”
