Emily Dickinson's Quotes

Emily Dickinson

"Much Madness is divinest Sense -- to a discerning Eye -- much Sense -- the starkest Madness --"

"Luck is not chance, it is toil. Fortune is expensive smile is earned."

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

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

"'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I Have ventured all upon a throw; Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so this side the victory!"

"His Labor is a Chant -- his Idleness -- a Tune -- oh, for a Bee's experience of Clovers, and of Noon!"

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul -- and sings the tunes without the words -- and never stops at all."

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

"Where thou art, that is home."

"Heaven is so far of the mind that were the mind dissolved -- the site of it by architect could not again be proved."

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain."

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

"The fog is rising."

"Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate."

"Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir."

"Surgeons must be very careful. When they take the knife!, underneath their fine incisions, stirs the Culprit -- Life!"

"Assent -- and you are sane -- , demur -- you're straightway dangerous -- , and handled with a Chain -- ."

"A wounded deer leaps the highest."

"The Brain is wider than the sky-."

"Nature, like us is sometimes caught without her diadem."

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door."

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs."

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things."

"I dwell in Possibility."

"We never know how high we are till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our stature's touch the skies."

"To live is so starling it leaves little time for anything else."

"Faith is a fine invention when Gentleman can see -- but microscopes are prudent in an emergency"

"His mind of man, a secret makes I meet him with a start he carries a circumference in which I have no part."

"To fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter, I know, who charge within the bosom, the Cavalry of Woe."

"Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed."

"I like a look of Agony, because I know it's true -- men do not sham Convulsion, nor simulate, a Throe --"

"Beauty is not caused. It is."

"The abdication of belief makes the behavior small -- better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all."

"Finite to fail, but infinite to venture."

"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."

"He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust."

"Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it."

"Tell the truth, but tell it slant."

"A word is dead when it is said. Some say. I say it just, begins to live that day."

"Of Consciousness, her awful Mate. The Soul cannot be rid -- as easy the secreting her behind the Eyes of God."

"Death is a Dialogue between, the Spirit and the Dust."

"Dying is a wild night and a new road."

"Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality."

"Let us go in; the fog is rising."