Emily Dickinson Quotes

Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out

Time is short and full, like an outgrown Frock - .

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.

Hope is a thing with feathers...

Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
That it will come again.

It's a great thing to be "great," Loo, and you and I might tug for a life, and never accomplish it, but no one can stop our looking on, and you know some cannot sing, but the orchard is full of birds, and we all can listen. What if we learn, ourselves, some day!

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to min,
His furniture is love.

There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!

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

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl -
I read that Foreign Lady** -
The Dark - felt beautiful -

And whether it was noon at night -
Or only Heaven - at Noon -
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell -

The Bees - became as Butterflies -
The Butterflies - as Swans -
Approached - and spurned the narrow Grass -
And just the meanest Tunes

That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer -
I took for Giants - practising
Titanic Opera -

The Days - to Mighty Metres stept -
The Homeliest - adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
'Twere suddenly confirmed -

I could not have defined the change -
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul -
Is witnessed - not explained -

'Twas a Divine Insanity -
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience -
'Tis Antidote to turn -

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft -
Magicians be asleep -
But Magic - hath an Element
Like Deity - to keep -

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

The whole of Immortality
Secreted by a star.

Belshazzar had a letter,
He never had but one;
Belshazzar's correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal copy
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation's wall.

Could you tell me how to grow
or is it unconveyed
like Melody
or Witchcraft?

Hope ... never stops at all.

Tie the strings to my life, my Lord, Then I am ready to go! Just a look at the horses - Rapid! That will do! Put me in on the firmest side, So I shall never fall; For we must ride to the Judgment, And it's partly down hill.

The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend,
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.
Secure against its own,
No treason it can fear;
Itself its sovereign, of itself
The soul should stand in awe.

Answer July-
Where is the Bee-
Where is the Blush-
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July-
Where is the Seed-
Where is the Bud-
Where is the May-
Answer Thee-Me-

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 -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

It sounded as if the streets were running,
And then the streets stood still.

A Word that Breathes Distinctly
Has not the Power to Die

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

A wounded deer leaps the highest

Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Beauty crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee

For love is immortality.

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

Where Thou art - that - is Home.

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.

A soft Sea washed around the House A Sea of Summer Air And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care - For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Though it may never come again is what makes it so sweet.

The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own.

Fame is a bee.
It has a song -
It has a sting -
Ah, too, it has a wing.

Forever is composed of nows.

Das 'Für immer' besteht aus vielen 'jetzt'.

When I lost the use of my Eyes it was a comfort to think there were so few real books that I could easily find some one to read me all of them.

I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear.

Looking at Death, is Dying - ...

Common sense is almost as omniscient as God.

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees.
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow
by fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten
Your brain to bubble cool,-
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

The Babies we were are buried, and their shadows are plodding on.

When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion.

I miss the grasshoppers much, but suppose it is all for the best. I should become too much attached to a trotting world.

Split the Lark - and you'll find the Music, Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled.

Pain - expands the Time - / Ages coil within / The minute Circumference / Of a single Brain - / Pain contracts - the Time - / Occupied with Shot / Gamuts of Eternities / Are as they were not -

A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear.

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.

Experiment escorts us last-
His pungent company
will not allow an axiom
An opportunity

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

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

When you come home, darling, I shant have your letters, but I shall have yourself, which is more
oh more, and better, than I can even think! I sit here with my little whip, cracking the time away, 'till not an hour is left of it- then you are here! And joy is here
joy now and forevermore! Tis only a few days, Susie, it will soon go away, yet I say, "go now, this very moment, for I need her- I must have her, oh, give her to me!" Sometimes when I do feel so, I think it may be wrong, and that God will punish me by taking you away; for He is very kind to let me write to you, and to give me your sweet letters, but my heart wants more.

A Clock stopped
Not the Mantel's
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
That just now dangled still

The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.

We do not play on Graves
Because there isn't Room
Besides - it isn't even - it slants
And People come
And put a Flower on it
And hang their faces so
We're fearing that their Hearts will drop
And crush our pretty play
And so we move as far
As Enemies - away
Just looking round to see how far
It is - Occasionally -

Dreams are the subtle Dower
That make us rich an Hour
Then fling us poor
Out of the purple door.

Lips unused to thee, Bashful, sip thy jasmines, As the fainting bee, Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums, Counts his nectars - enters, And is lost in balms!

You are nipping in the bud fancies which I let blossom. The shore is safer, but I love to buffet the sea - I can count the bitter wrecks here in these pleasant waters, and hear the murmuring winds, but oh, I love the danger!

TO my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature's sentinels.

In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible.

The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul
BOOKS.

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.

The only secret people keep is immortality.

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere ...

You can stay young as long as you learn.

We meet no Stranger, but Ourself.

Prosperity Whose sources are interior. As soon Adversity A diamond overtake.

I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still.

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

To see her is a picture-
To hear her is a tune-
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June-
To know her not-Affliction-
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the the Sun
Were shining in your Hand.

While I was fearing it, it came,
But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it dear.
There is a fitting a dismay,
A fitting a despair.
'T is harder knowing it is due,
Than knowing it is here.
The trying on the utmost,
The morning it is new,
Is terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through

Who robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?

The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee ...

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

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

We dream - it is good we are dreaming - It would hurt us - were we awake - But since it is playing - kill us, And we are playing - shriek - What harm? Men die - externally - It is a truth - of Blood - But we - are dying in Drama - And Drama - is never dead - Cautious - We jar each other - And either - open the eyes - Lest the Phantasm - prove the Mistake - And the livid Surprise Cool us to Shafts of Granite - With just an Age - and Name - And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian - It's prudenter - to dream -

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by,
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

Tis not that dieing hurts us so- tis living- hurts us more.

Publication - is the auction of the mind ...

What shall we do my darling, when trial grows more, and more, when the dim, lone light expires, and it's dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the forest - whose is the hand to help us, and to lead, and forever guide us? ... Where do you think I've strayed and from what new errand returned. I have come from to and fro, and walking up and down the same place that Satan hailed from when God asked where he'd been.

Till I loved I never liked enough.

BEQUEST. You left me, sweet, two legacies, - A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of; You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me.

I had no cause to be awake,
My best was gone to sleep,
And morn a new politeness took
And failed to wake them up,
But called the others clear, 5
And passed their curtains by.
Sweet morning, when I over-sleep,
Knock, recollect, for me!
I looked at sunrise once,
And then I looked at them, 10
And wishfulness in me arose
For circumstance the same.
'T was such an ample peace,
It could not hold a sigh,
'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced,
'T was sunset all the day.
So choosing but a gown
And taking but a prayer,
The only raiment I should need,
I struggled, and was there.

And then
a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face
Until it blocked my eyes

I like a look of agony, because I know it's true

I do not know the man so bold He dare in lonely Place That awful stranger Consciousness Deliberately face-.

Those who have not found the heaven below,
will fail of it above.

LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose - just a throne.

This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more.

Impossibility, like wine
Exhilarates the man
Who tastes it; Possibility
Is flavoreless.

Emerging from an Abyss and entering it again - that is Life, is it not?

Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift supplies.

Angels in the early morning may be seen the dews among. Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying. Do the buds to them belong?

I NEVER lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod;
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels, twice descending,
Reimbursed my store.
Burglar, banker, father,
I am poor once more!

How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel
how much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your voice ... Give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endure ...

I am going to learn to make bread tomorrow. So if you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up, mixing flour, milk, saleratus, etc., with a deal of grace. I advise you if you dont know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch.

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away ...

Bring me the sunset in a cup.

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.

Such is the force of Happiness
The Least can lift a ton Assisted by its stimulus.