Emily Dickinson Quotes

Emily Dickinson shares delicate, poetic thoughts on nature, life, and death that feel like a quiet garden whisper.

59 quotes

1. My friends are my 'estate.' Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.

2. Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires a sorest need. Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory As he defeated - dying - On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!

3. 'Faith' is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see - But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency.

4. 'Hope' is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm -

5. I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you - Nobody - Too?

6. How dreary - to be - Somebody! How public - like a Frog - To tell one's name - the livelong June - To an admiring Bog!

7. The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Present no more -

8. Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - I keep it, staying at Home- With a Bobolink for a Chorister - And an Orchard, for a Dome-

9. God preaches, a noted Clergyman - And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- I'm going, all along.

10. This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me - The simple News that Nature told - With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see - For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen - Judge tenderly - of Me

11. I died for Beauty - but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb, When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room - He questioned softly 'Why I failed'? 'For Beauty,' I replied. 'And I - for Truth, - Themself are One - We Brethren, are', He said -

12. Dreams - are well - but Waking's better, If One wake at Morn - If One wake at Midnight - better - Dreaming - of the Dawn -

13. Love - thou art Veiled - A few - behold thee - Smile - and alter - and prattle - and die - Bliss - were an Oddity - without thee - Nicknamed by God - Eternity -

14. I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm -

15. Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me - The Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality. We slowly drove - He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility -

16. Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity -

17. My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identified - And carried Me away - And now We roam in Sovereign Woods - And now We hunt the Doe - And every time I speak for Him - The Mountains straight reply -

18. We outgrow love, like other things And put it in the Drawer - Till it an Antique fashion shows - Like Costumes Grandsires wore.

19. If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain.

20. A Grave - is a restricted Breadth - Yet ampler than the Sun - And all the Seas He populates And lands he looks upon To Him who on its small Repose Bestows a single Friend - Circumference without Relief - Or Estimate - or End

21. I never saw a Moor - I never saw the Sea - Yet know I how the Heather looks And what a Billow be. I never spoke with God Nor visited in Heaven - Yet certain am I of the spot As if the Checks were given -

22. To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights - be!

23. A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came, A Wisdom, without Face, or Name, A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home And so the Night became.

24. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind -

25. Could Hope inspect her Basis Her Craft were done - Has a fictitious Charter Or it has none - Balked in the vastest instance But to renew - Felled but by one assassin - Prosperity -

26. Not with a Club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone - A Whip so small you could not see it I've known To lash the Magic Creature Till it fell, Yet that Whip's Name Too noble then to tell. Magnanimous as Bird By Boy descried - Singing unto the Stone Of which it died - Shame need not crouch In such an Earth as Ours - Shame - stand erect - The Universe is yours.

27. More than the Grave is closed to me - The Grave and that Eternity To which the Grave adheres - I cling to nowhere till I fall - The Crash of nothing, yet of all - How similar appears -

28. If Aims impel these Astral Ones The ones allowed to know Know that which makes them as forgot As Dawn forgets them - now

29. Who has not found the Heaven - below - Will fail of it above -

30. The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee - A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy -

31. I took one Draught of Life - I'll tell you what I paid - Precisely an existence - The market price, they said.

32. Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature's curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, - For this was woman's son. ''Twere all I had,' she stricken gasped - Oh, what a livid boon!

33. Her poetry is the diary or autobiography - though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth - of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute.

34. The Supernatural is only the Natural disclosed.

35. Fearless--the cobweb swings from the ceiling-- Indolent Housewife--in Daisies--lain!

36. They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.

37. When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground.

38. Beauty is not the cause of something, it is what it is.

39. You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself.

40. The Soul should always stand ajar.

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

42. God, keep me from what they call 'households,'

43. Best Witchcraft is Geometry To the magician's mind - His ordinary acts are feats To thinking of mankind.

44. Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

45. How very sad it is to have a confiding nature, one's hopes and feelings are quite at the mercy of all who come along; and how very desirable to be a stolid individual, whose hopes and aspirations are safe in one's waistcoat pocket, and that a pocket indeed, and one not to be picked!

46. Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

47. When a Lover is a Beggar Abject is his Knee. When a Lover is an Owner Different is he.

48. Why should we censure Othello when the Criterion Lover says, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me"?

49. The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan - Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man.

50. Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.

51. A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period - When March is scarcely here A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels. It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you. Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay - A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament.

52. I could not prove the Years had feet-/Yet confident they run.

53. How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door.

54. Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.

55. The abdication of Belief Makes the Behavior small- Better an ignis fatuus Than no illume at all.

56. I SEE thee better in the dark, I do not need a light. The love of thee a prism be Excelling violet. I see thee better for the years That hunch themselves between, The miner’s lamp sufficient be To nullify the mine. And in the grave I see thee best— Its little panels be A-glow, all ruddy with the light I held so high for thee! What need of day to those whose dark Hath so surpassing sun, It seem it be continually At the meridian?

57. One step at a time is all it takes to get you there.

58. Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself.

59. Till I loved I never lived.