Emily Dickinson Quotes

Common sense is almost as omniscient as God. ~ Emily Dickinson

Our little kinsmen after rain
In plenty may be seen,
a pink and pulpy multitude
The tepid ground upon;
A needless life if seemed to me
Until a little bird
As to a hospitality
Advanced and breakfasted. ~ Emily Dickinson

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

I cannot live with you, It would be life, And life is over there Behind the shelf ~ Emily Dickinson

So from the mould
Scarlet and Gold
Many a Bulb will rise --
Hidden away, cunningly,
From sagacious eyes.

So from Cocoon
Many a Worm
Leap so Highland gay,
Peasants like me --
Peasants like Thee,
Gaze perplexedly! ~ Emily Dickinson

How glad I am that spring has come, and how it calms my mind when wearied with study to walk out in the green fields and beside the pleasant streams in which South Hadley is rich! ... The older I grow, the more do I love spring and spring flowers. Is it not so with you? (May 16, 1848 to Abiah Root) ~ Emily Dickinson

I hope you're very careful working, eating and drinking when the heat is so great
there are temptations there which at home you are free from
beware the juicy fruits, and the cooling ades, and cordials, and do not eat ice-cream, it is so very dangerous. ~ Emily Dickinson

Saying nothing sometimes says the most. ~ Emily Dickinson

The soul should always stand ajar. ~ Emily Dickinson

And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again, Then space began to toll. ~ Emily Dickinson

How odd that girl's life looks Behind this soft eclipse! I think that earth seems so To those in heaven now. This being comfort, then That other kind was pain; But why compare? I'm wife! stop there! ~ Emily Dickinson

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell. ~ Emily Dickinson

I was unnerved to learn in my twenties that the poems of Emily Dickinson that I had memorized as a girl were not the poems as she had written them. ~ Helen Vendler

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

Publication - is the auction of the mind ... ~ Emily Dickinson

Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself. ~ Emily Dickinson

That no Flake of [snow] fall on you or them - is a wish that would be a Prayer, were Emily not a Pagan. ~ Emily Dickinson

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

It is strange that the most intangible thing is the most adhesive. ~ Emily Dickinson

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now ~ Emily Dickinson

When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl
not Frances, not anyone I've ever known
and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me
that one about being chartless
and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me
that one about the little lamb that made thee
and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door. ~ J.D. Salinger

Mirth is the Mail of Anguish -- ~ Emily Dickinson

Dying is a wild night and a new road. ~ Emily Dickinson

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs. ~ Emily Dickinson

I don't profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense. ~ Emily Dickinson

After you went, a low wind warbled through the house like a spacious bird, making it high but lonely. When you had gone the love came. I supposed it would. The supper of the heart is when the guest has gone. ~ Emily Dickinson

I sing to use the Waiting
My bonnet but to tie,
And close the door unto my house
No more to do have I

'Till his best step approaching,
We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sung
To keep the dark away. ~ Emily Dickinson

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson. ~ Pico Iyer

Heavenly Father - take to thee The supreme iniquity Fashioned by thy candid Hand In a moment contraband - Though to trust us seem to us More respectful - We are Dust - We apologize to thee For thine own Duplicity. ~ Emily Dickinson

We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble. ~ Emily Dickinson

SUMMER SHOWER. A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof; A half a dozen kissed the eaves, And made the gables laugh. A few went out to help the brook, That went to help the sea. Myself conjectured, Were they pearls, What necklaces could be! The dust replaced in hoisted roads, The birds jocoser sung; The sunshine threw his hat away, The orchards spangles hung. The breezes brought dejected lutes, And bathed them in the glee; The East put out a single flag, And signed the fete away. ~ Emily Dickinson

When I think of Emily Dickinson, there's not one particular poem of hers that jumps out, but I do have a very vivid image of an ill woman with giant eyes who wants to write about the sun exploding. ~ Mallory Ortberg

Emily Dickinson once wrote, 'hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,' and she was right, but she forgot to mention that despair is the thing with claws that tears out your heart. Kind of a major oversight there, Em." pg. 25 ~ Suzanne Sullivan

If I dismiss the ordinary - waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life ... To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories - to know that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing - is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don't know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring. ~ Dani Shapiro

The minister goes stiffly in As if the house were his, ~ Emily Dickinson

Opinion is a flitting thing, but the truth outlasts the sun. ~ Emily Dickinson

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity. ~ Emily Dickinson

Truth - is as old as God - ... ~ Emily Dickinson

Beauty crowds me till I die. ~ Emily Dickinson

If you saw a bullet
hit a Bird - and he told you
he wasn't shot - you might weep
at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word -
One drop more from the gash
that stains your Daisy's
bosom - then would you believe? ~ Emily Dickinson

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

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

I'm nobody, who are you? ~ Emily Dickinson

I do not think we have a right to withhold from the world a word or a thought any more than a deed which might help a single soul ... ~ Emily Dickinson

Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn't sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs.

Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality's skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun's rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot.

Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is?

It i ~ J. Ruth Gendler

You cannot fold a flood and put it in a drawer, because the winds would find it out and tell your cedar floor. ~ Emily Dickinson

For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas. ~ Charles Simic

Spring's first conviction is a wealth beyond its whole experience. ~ Emily Dickinson

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

The hearts that never lean must fall. ~ Emily Dickinson

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

I'll tell you how the Sun rose. ~ Emily Dickinson

I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes - I wonder if it weighs like mine - or has an easier size. ~ Emily Dickinson

You'll find it-when you try to die- The Easier to let go- For recollecting such as went- You could not spare-you know. ~ Emily Dickinson

A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear. ~ Emily Dickinson

To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim. ~ Emily Dickinson

The possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination. ~ Emily Dickinson

Forever - is composed of Nows - / 'Tis not a different time - / Except for Infiniteness - / And Latitude of Home - / From this - experienced Here - / Remove the Dates - to These - / Let Months dissolve in further Months - / And Years - exhale in Years - ~ Emily Dickinson

Hope is a thing with feathers... ~ Emily Dickinson

Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself. ~ Emily Dickinson

Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir,
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.
Its past set down before the soul,
And lighted with a match,
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed despatch.
Remorse is cureless, - the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is His institution,
The complement of hell. ~ Emily Dickinson

Beauty is not caused, it is; Chase it and it ceases, Chase it not and it abides ... ~ Emily Dickinson

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing -
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears -
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.
Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown -
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return. ~ Emily Dickinson

A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld, - The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies, - Lest interview annul a want That image satisfies. ~ Emily Dickinson

Sometimes when I've got a baseball player alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him. And the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks its foreplay. ~ Ron Shelton

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

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

I had no monarch in my life, and cannot rule myself; and when I try to organize, my little force explodes and leaves me bare and charred. ~ Emily Dickinson

The will is always near, dear, though the feet vary. ~ Emily Dickinson

A color stands abroad on solitary hills that silence cannot overtake, but human nature feels. ~ Emily Dickinson

Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -
To a heart in port -
Done with the compass -
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden -
Ah, the sea!
Might I but moor - Tonight -
In thee! ~ Emily Dickinson

Existence has overpowered Books. Today I slew a Mushroom. ~ Emily Dickinson

For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home ~ Emily Dickinson

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn. ~ Emily Dickinson

A little road not made of man,
Enabled of the eye,
Accessible to thill of bee,
Or cart of butterfly.

If town it have, beyond itself,
'T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh, - no vehicle
Bears me along that way. ~ Emily Dickinson

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. ~ Emily Dickinson

The Crime, from us, is hidden, [though] he is presumed to know. ~ Emily Dickinson

Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won all.
Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul. ~ Emily Dickinson

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision. ~ Emily Dickinson

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death,
The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust" -
Death doubts it -
Argues from the Ground -
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay. ~ Emily Dickinson

Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door. ~ Emily Dickinson

GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him -
Tell him the page I did n't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried, 5
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

"Tell him it was n't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; 10
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him - No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it, 15
And then you and I were silenter.

"Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended -
What could it hinder so, to say? 20
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow, - happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head! ~ Emily Dickinson

I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the streets alone- often at night, beside, I fall asleep in tears, for your dear face, yet not one word comes back to me. If it is finished, tell me, and I will raise the lid to my box of Phantoms, and lay one more love in; but if it lives and beats still, still lives and beats for me, then say so, and I will strike the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die. ~ Emily Dickinson

All but Death, can be Adjusted -
Dynasties repaired -
Systems - settled in their Sockets -
Citadels dissolved . . . ~ Emily Dickinson

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

Other Courtesies have been -
Other Courtesy may be -
We commend ourselves to thee
Paragon of Chivalry. ~ Emily Dickinson

SWEETEST IN THE GALE
by
Michelle Valois

After Emily Dickinson

You won't lose your hair, I heard at the start of treatment, and though I didn't, I lost a litany of other lesser and greater luxuries - saliva, stamina, taste buds, my voice - but my hair, during that chilly sojourn in the land of extremity to which I had sailed on a strange and stormy sea, my hair was not taken from me.

Had it been, I would have perched one of those 18th century wigs on my head, such as those worn by the French aristocracy, measuring three, four, even five feet high and stuffed, as they were known to be, with all sorts of things: ribbons, pearls, jewels, flowers, tunes without words, reproductions of great sailing vessels, my soul inside a little bird cage - ornaments selected to satisfy a theme: the signs of the Zodiac (à la Zodiaque) or the discovery of a new vaccine (à l'inoculation) or, as was the case in June of 1782, the first successful hot air balloon flight by the brothers Michel and Etienne Montgolfier.

Regarde, I exclaim to my ladies in waiting, pointing to the sky on that bright afternoon as the balloon, made of linen and paper, rises some 6,000 feet. Later, a duck, then a sheep, and finally a human is carried away. I watch, inspired, hopeful, whispering, lest my doctors overhear: when the storm turns sore, and that little bird escapes her little bird cage and is abashed without reckoning, I will sail away in my balloon, prepared, ~ Michelle Valois

For love is immortality. ~ Emily Dickinson

You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life. ~ Maurice Sendak

It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble. ~ Emily Dickinson

Water, is taught by thirst. ~ Emily Dickinson

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! ~ Emily Dickinson

There's a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight Of cathedral tunes. ~ Emily Dickinson

Down Time's quaint stream
Without an oar
We are enforced to sail
Our Port a secret
Our Perchance a Gale
What Skipper would
Incur the Risk
What Buccaneer would ride
Without a surety from the Wind
Or schedule of the Tide ~ Emily Dickinson

Two Seasons, it is said, exist-
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost-
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer? ~ Emily Dickinson

Love is like life-merely longer. ~ Emily Dickinson

God's unique capacity is too surprising to surprise. ~ Emily Dickinson

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! ~ Emily Dickinson

There's nothing wicked in Shakespeare, and if there is I don't want to know it. ~ Emily Dickinson