The 40 Best Emily Dickenson Quotes (2024)

“To be alive──is Power.”

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

“If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I ’d toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity.”

“Now, when I read, I read not,For interrupting tearsObliterate the etchingsToo costly for repairs.”

“I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, eyes –I wonder if It weighs like Mine –Or has an Easier size.”

“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.”

“Not knowing when the dawn will comeI open every door.”

“To see the Summer SkyIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—True Poems flee—”

“Not with a club, the Heart is brokenNor with a Stone –A Whip so small you could not see itI’ve known”

“Why joys so scantily disburse,Why Paradise defer,Why floods are served to us in bowls,—I speculate no more.”

“The Carriage held but just Ourselves –And Immortality.”

“The Soul selects her own Society.”

“Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne’er succeed.”

“The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.”

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

“We slowly drove – He knew no haste”

“It might be lonelierWithout the Loneliness”

“The Brain is deeper than the sea”

“While I was fearing it, it came,But came with less of fear,Because that fearing it so longHad almost made it dear.”

“Because I could not stop for Death.”

“I am not used to Hope —It might intrude upon —Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place —Ordained to Suffering —”

“I started early, took my dog,And visited the sea;The mermaids in the basem*ntCame out to look at me”

“In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed.”

“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”

“Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all”

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”

“I dwell in Possibility –A fairer House than Prose –More numerous of Windows –Superior – for Doors –”

“If you were coming in the fall,I’d brush the summer by”

“The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place.”

“Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.”

“Earth is crammed with Heaven.”

“The moon was but a chin of goldA night or two ago,And now she turns her perfect faceUpon the world below.”

″‘Tis harder knowing it is due,Than knowing it is here.”

“Death is like the insect Menacing the tree, Competent to kill it, But decoyed may be.”

“Then I will not repineKnowing that bird of mineThough flown shall in a distant treeBright melody for meReturn.”

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

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

“As he handed it to me, I saw he’d gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white. We were not the kissing kind, me and Pa, but I wished that maybe he would at least hug me good-bye.”

“Why isn’t real life like book life?” I asked, sitting down next to him. “Why aren’t people plain and uncomplicated? Why don’t they do what you expect them to do, like characters in a novel?” I took my shoes and stockings off and dangled my feet in the water, too.

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn’t have written even one poem if she’d had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for.”