100 Quotes by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, an American poet, is renowned for her unique and innovative approach to poetry, characterized by its concise yet profound language, unconventional punctuation, and exploration of themes ranging from nature to death to the mysteries of existence. Much of her work remained unpublished during her lifetime, and it wasn't until after her death that her poetry gained recognition for its artistic brilliance and emotional depth. Dickinson's introspective and introspection-inviting poems often delve into the complexities of human emotions and the enigmatic aspects of life. Her ability to distill profound thoughts into compact and poignant verses has made her one of the most celebrated poets in American literary history, influencing generations of poets and readers alike.
Emily Dickinson Quotes
A little Madness in the Spring is wholesome even for the King. (Meaning)
I measure every Grief I meet with narrow, probing, Eyes. (Quote Meaning)
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed. (Meaning)
Nature is a haunted house--but Art--a house that tries to be haunted. (Quote Meaning)
Beauty crowds me till I die. (Meaning)
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all. (Quote Meaning)
I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.
We turn not older with years but newer every day.
If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things.
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
Saying nothing, sometimes says the most.
Bring me the sunset in a cup.
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
If I can stop one heart from breaking…” Emily Dickinson 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.
Sunrise: day's great progenitor.
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.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door. (Meaning)
Beauty is not caused. It is.
The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee.
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. (Quote Meaning)
That it will never come again is what makes life sweet. (Meaning)
Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.
Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it. (Quote Meaning)
I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose. (Meaning)
The brain is wider than the sky. (Quote Meaning)
Pardon My Sanity In A World Insane
I could not stop for death and he did not stop for me.
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -
The heart wants what it wants or else it does not care. (Meaning)
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. (Quote Meaning)
We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.
Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.
Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality. (Meaning)
Forever is composed of nows. (Quote Meaning)
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.
I'll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, "That must have been the sun!
Till I loved I never lived.
You don't have to be a house to be haunted.
This is my letter to the world That never wrote to me
PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there's a word to lift your hat to... to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that's the genius behind poetry.
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Fortune befriends the bold.
You can stay young as long as you learn.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
To ignore or use silence is a cruel tool. Hence this quote: Silence is all we dread; there's ransom in a voice; but silence is infinity.
The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.
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. (Meaning)
How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!
One step at a time is all it takes to get you there.
Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.
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.
November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.
The possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate. (Quote Meaning)
Good times are always mutual; that is what makes good times.
We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.
To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.
There is always one thing to be grateful for - that one is one's self and not somebody else.
I felt it shelter to speak to you.
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.
That love is all there is, Is all we know of love.
I have an appetite for silence.
My friends are my estate. (Meaning)
I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us? Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! (Quote Meaning)
The Soul selects her own Society. (Meaning)
Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned. (Quote Meaning)
Dying is a wild night and a new road. (Meaning)
To be alive──is Power.
The Soul should always stand ajar.
The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul: Books.
Where thou art, that is home.
Opinion is a flitting thing but Truth outlasts the Sun.
Heart, we will forget him, You and I, tonight! You must forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.
To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—
The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.
Those who have not found the heaven below, will fail of it above.
For love is immortality.
You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me.
I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.
The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.
Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.
The only Commandment I ever obeyed — 'Consider the Lilies.
Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
To shut your eyes is to travel.
The past is not a package one can lay away.
I imagine therefore I belong and am free.
A great hope fell You heard no noise The ruin was within.
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
Nature is what we see - the hill, the afternoon, squirrel, eclipse, the bumblebee. Nay, nature is heaven. Nature is what we hear.
I am nobody! Who are you? Are you a nobody, too?
We meet no Stranger, but Ourself.
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant. (Meaning)
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. (Quote Meaning)
I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels the work.
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. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
It is easy to work when the soul is at play.
Action is redemption.
To multiply the harbors does not reduce the sea.
Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself.
Longing is like a seed that wrestles in the ground
LOOK back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling sun In human nature's west!
To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.
How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!
Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence.
Love is everything. And that's all we know about it.
I dwell in possibilities.
Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.
Hope never stops at all.
To die before one fears to die may be a boon.
The sailor cannot see the north / but knows the needle can.
I hope your rambles have been sweet, and your reveries spacious
Wonder is not precisely knowing.
Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.
Love is like life-merely longer.
Each that we lose takes a part of us. A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, is summoned by the tides.
Remorse is memory awake.
Friends are nations in themselves.
The Heart asks Pleasure--first and then--Excuse from Pain"
Common sense is almost as omniscient as God.
The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste.
I would paint a portrait which would bring the tears, had I canvas for it, and the scene should be -- solitude, and the figures -- solitude -- and the lights and shades, each a solitude.
We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.
The power to console is not within corporeal reach - though its attempt is precious.
My friends are my estate. Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them. They tell me those who were poor early have different views of gold. I don't know how that is. God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him.
The truth I do not dare to know I muffle with a jest.
Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat.
Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift supplies.
I think Heaven will not be as good as earth, unless it bring with it that sweet power to remember, which is the staple of Heaven here.
Life is the finest secret. So long as that remains, we must all whisper.
The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more.
Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremist, are but its trembling emblems.
I could not prove the Years had feet-/Yet confident they run.
This World is not Conclusion. A Sequel stands beyond- Invisible, as Music- But positive, as Sound.
An ear can break a human heart As quickly as a spear, We wish the ear had not a heart So dangerously near.
― Emily Dickinson Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
