Emily Dickenson Quotes

“Because I could not stop for Death.”

“The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.”

“We slowly drove – He knew no haste”

“It might be lonelier Without the Loneliness”

“The Brain is deeper than the sea”

“Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.”

“The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.”

“The Soul selects her own Society.”

“Earth is crammed with Heaven.”

“The moon was but a chin of gold A night or two ago, And now she turns her perfect face Upon the world below.”

“For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.”

“If you were coming in the fall, I’d brush the summer by”

“Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.”

“To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—”

“The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.”

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”

“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”

“Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all”

“To be alive──is Power.”

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

“If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I ’d toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity.”

“Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed.”

“I am not used to Hope — It might intrude upon — Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place — Ordained to Suffering —”

“I started early, took my dog, And visited the sea; The mermaids in the basement Came out to look at me”

“In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed.”

“Not with a club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone – A Whip so small you could not see it I’ve known”

“Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.”

“While I was fearing it, it came, But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long Had almost made it dear.”

″‘Tis harder knowing it is due, Than knowing it is here.”

“Now, when I read, I read not, For interrupting tears Obliterate the etchings Too costly for repairs.”

“Why joys so scantily disburse, Why Paradise defer, Why floods are served to us in bowls,— I speculate no more.”

“Death is like the insect Menacing the tree, Competent to kill it, But decoyed may be.”

“Then I will not repine Knowing that bird of mine Though flown shall in a distant tree Bright melody for me Return.”

“Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true”

“I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes – I wonder if It weighs like Mine – Or has an Easier size.”

“I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –”

“Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.”

“As he handed it to me, I saw he’d gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white. We were not the kissing kind, me and Pa, but I wished that maybe he would at least hug me good-bye.”

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn’t have written even one poem if she’d had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for.”

“Why isn’t real life like book life?” I asked, sitting down next to him. “Why aren’t people plain and uncomplicated? Why don’t they do what you expect them to do, like characters in a novel?” I took my shoes and stockings off and dangled my feet in the water, too.