Emily Dickinson Quotes (543 Quotes)

Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need.

How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the world!

What madness, by their side,
A vision to provide
Of future days
They cannot praise.

Nor try to tie the Butterfly,
Nor climb the Bars of Ecstasy,
In insecurity to lie
Is Joy's insuring quality.

A little bread -- a crust -- a crumb --
A little trust -- a demijohn --
Can keep the soul alive --
Not portly, mind!

The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity.

He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird -- had stamped her foot --
And cried "Give Me" --
My Reason -- Life --
I had not had -- but for Yourself --
'Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom's Tomb --
Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb --
Than this smart Misery.

I showed her Secrets -- Morning's Nest --
The Rope the Nights were put across --
And now -- "Would'st have me for a Guest?

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?

A Counterfeit -- a Plated Person --
I would not be --
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie --
Truth is good Health -- and Safety, and the Sky.

My dazzled face
In such a shining place!

And He and He in mighty List
Unto this present, run,
The larger Glory for the less
A just sufficient Ring.

The Possible's slow fuse is lit By the Imagination.

A face devoid of love or grace,
A hateful, hard, successful face,
A face with which a stone
Would feel as thoroughly at ease
As were they old acquaintances --
First time together thrown.

Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light
Beguiled of immortality
Bequeaths him to the night.

Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

I hide myself within my flower,
That fading from your Vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me --
Almost a loneliness.

If I shouldn't be alive When the robins come, Give the one in red cravat A memorial crumb.

My soul, to find them, come,
They cannot call, they're dumb,
Nor prove, nor woo,
But that they have abode
Is absolute as God,
And instant, too.

Drab Habitation of Whom Tabernacle or Tomb - or Dome of Worm - or Porch of Gnome - or some Elf's Catacomb

Has it feathers like a Bird?

Anger as soon as fed is dead - 'Tis starving makes it fat.

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some -

That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given.

First at the March -- competing with the Wind --
Her panting note exalts us -- like a friend --
Last to adhere when Summer cleaves away --
Elegy of Integrity.

I mind me that of Anguish -- sent --
Some drifts were moved away --
Before my simple bosom -- broke --
And why not this -- if they?

And overtaken in the Dark --
Where You had put me down --
By Some one carrying a Light --
I -- too -- received the Sign.

Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Heaven is so far of the Mind That were the Mind dissolved The Site of it by Architect Could not again be proved

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

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

Escape -- it is the Basket
In which the Heart is caught
When down some awful Battlement
The rest of Life is dropt --

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

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

By Contrast certifying
The Bird of Birds is gone --
How nullified the Meadow --
Her Sorcerer withdrawn!

Judgment is justest
When the Judged,
His action laid away,
Divested is of every Disk
But his sincerity.

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

How far is it to Heaven?

The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself --
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?

The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know.

If the foolish, call them "flowers" --
Need the wiser, tell?

The Emigrant of Light, it is
Afflicted for the Day.

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

Too few the mornings be,
Too scant the nights.

Some Sailor, skirting foreign shores --
Some pale Reporter, from the awful doors
Before the Seal!

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

Unto Us -- the Suns extinguish --
To our Opposite --
New Horizons -- they embellish --
Fronting Us -- with Night.

She could not find her Yes --
And then, I brake my life -- And Lo,
A Light, for her, did solemn glow,
The larger, as her face withdrew --
And could she, further, "No"?

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!

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.