Emily Dickinson quotes are often introspective, philosophical, and explore the complexities of human emotions and experiences. Dickinson’s words often convey a sense of mystery and ambiguity, inviting readers to contemplate and interpret their meanings. Her poetry and quotes have had a lasting impact on literature and continue to inspire and resonate with readers today.
Top 10 Most Famous Emily Dickinson Quotes
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.
— Emily Dickinson
We turn not older with years but newer every day.
— Emily Dickinson
Saying nothing sometimes says the most.
— Emily Dickinson
Forever is composed of nows.
— Emily Dickinson
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
— Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words – and never stops at all.
— Emily Dickinson
How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!
— Emily Dickinson
Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.
— Emily Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
— Emily Dickinson
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
— Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson Quotes About Death
How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul.
— Emily Dickinson
Heaven is so far of the mind that were the mind dissolved — the site of it by architect could not again be proved.
— Emily Dickinson
Anger as soon as fed is dead; ‘Tis starving makes it fat.
— Emily Dickinson
My life closed twice before its close.
— Emily Dickinson
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –And Immortality.
— Emily Dickinson
Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last.
— Emily Dickinson
Afraid? Of whom am I afraid? Not death. For who is he?
— Emily Dickinson
Parting is all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell.
— Emily Dickinson
A word is dead when it is said. Some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
— Emily Dickinson
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
— Emily Dickinson
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
— Emily Dickinson
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
— Emily Dickinson
She died-this was the way she died;
And when her breath was done,
Took up her simple wardrobe
And started for the sun.
— Emily Dickinson
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.
— Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –
— Emily Dickinson
Since then ’tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
— Emily Dickinson
Those who have not found the heaven below,
will fail of it above.
— Emily Dickinson
Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without – the power to die.
— Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
— Emily Dickinson
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –
— Emily Dickinson
A Toad, can die of Light –
Death is the Common Right
Of Toads and Men.
— Emily Dickinson
Love can do all but raise the Dead
I doubt if even that
From such a giant were withheld
Were flesh equivalent.
— Emily Dickinson
That short, potential stir
That each can make but once,
That bustle so illustrious
Tis almost consequence,
Is the éclat of death.
— Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson Quotes About Love
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.
— Emily Dickinson
Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.
— Emily Dickinson
Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself.
— Emily Dickinson
Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.
— Emily Dickinson
The heart wants what it wants — or else it does not care.
— Emily Dickinson
I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.
— Emily Dickinson
Sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you’ll never go away, oh you never will.
— Emily Dickinson
Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.
— Emily Dickinson
To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
— Emily Dickinson
The Heart is the Capital of the Mind—
The Mind is a single State—
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent—
— Emily Dickinson
Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
— Emily Dickinson
But love is tired and must sleep,
And hungry and must graze
And so abets the shining Fleet
Till it is out of gaze.
— Emily Dickinson
They say that ‘home is where the heart is.’ I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings.
— Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain…
— Emily Dickinson
Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
— Emily Dickinson
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
— Emily Dickinson
I love the cause that slew me.
— Emily Dickinson
Not with a club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone –
A Whip so small you could not see it
I’ve known.
— Emily Dickinson
Sweet hour, blessed hour, to carry me to you, and to bring you back to me, long enough to snatch one kiss, and whisper goodbye again.
— Emily Dickinson
We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer.
— Emily Dickinson
Judge tenderly of me.
— Emily Dickinson
The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain.
— Emily Dickinson
Give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endure…
— Emily Dickinson
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away.
— Emily Dickinson
If you were here, we need not talk at all for our eyes would whisper for us and, your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language.
— Emily Dickinson
Inspirational Emily Dickinson Quotes
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
— Emily Dickinson
Did you ask me out with a bunch of Daisies, I should thank you, and accept –
— Emily Dickinson
To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
— Emily Dickinson
I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.
— Emily Dickinson
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.
— Emily Dickinson
Now there’s a word to lift your hat to… to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that’s the genius behind poetry.
— Emily Dickinson
A wounded dear leaps the highest.
— Emily Dickinson
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry.
— Emily Dickinson
The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.
— Emily Dickinson
If your Nerve, deny you
Go above your Nerve.
— Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
— Emily Dickinson
But a Book is only the Heart’s Portrait- every Page a Pulse.
— Emily Dickinson
The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.
— Emily Dickinson
I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me.
— Emily Dickinson
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.
— Emily Dickinson
The Bees — became as Butterflies —
The Butterflies — as Swans —
Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass —
And just the meanest Tunes.
— Emily Dickinson
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
— Emily Dickinson
Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
— Emily Dickinson
The sun just touched the morning; The morning, happy thing, Supposed that he had come to dwell, And life would be all spring.
— Emily Dickinson
Bring me the sunset in a cup.
— Emily Dickinson
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.
— Emily Dickinson
Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.
— Emily Dickinson
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
— Emily Dickinson
I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.
— Emily Dickinson
Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
— Emily Dickinson
Dwell in possibility. Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
— Emily Dickinson
Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.
— Emily Dickinson
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
— Emily Dickinson
Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
— Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The carriage held but just ourselves – and immortality.
— 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
More Emily Dickinson Quotes
Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.
— Emily Dickinson
Nature is a haunted house – but Art – is a house that tries to be haunted.
— Emily Dickinson
Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.
— Emily Dickinson
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
— Emily Dickinson
Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.
— Emily Dickinson
Fortune befriends the bold.
— Emily Dickinson
The brain is wider than the sky.
— Emily Dickinson
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
— Emily Dickinson
Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
— Emily Dickinson
Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.
— Emily Dickinson
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
— Emily Dickinson
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
— Emily Dickinson
Where thou art, that is home.
— Emily Dickinson
I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.
— Emily Dickinson
My friends are my estate.
— Emily Dickinson
I dwell in possibility.
— Emily Dickinson
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
— Emily Dickinson
I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.
— Emily Dickinson
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
— Emily Dickinson
God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.
— Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.
— Emily Dickinson
Beauty is not caused. It is.
— Emily Dickinson
If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.
— Emily Dickinson
That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.
— Emily Dickinson
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
— Emily Dickinson
Dying is a wild night and a new road.
— Emily Dickinson
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.
— Emily Dickinson
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
— 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
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
Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.
— Emily Dickinson
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.
— Emily Dickinson
I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.
— Emily Dickinson
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
— Emily Dickinson
I’m nobody, who are you?
— Emily Dickinson
We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.
— Emily Dickinson
Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!
— Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.
— Emily Dickinson
In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
— Emily Dickinson
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.
— Emily Dickinson
Biography of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet who was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was the second of three children and grew up in a prominent family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was a prominent lawyer and politician, and her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was a homemaker.
Dickinson was a gifted student and attended Amherst Academy, a prestigious school for girls. She went on to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but only stayed for a year before returning home due to health problems. After leaving school, she spent much of her time writing poetry and corresponding with friends and family members.
Dickinson’s poetry was known for its unconventional style, often using slant rhymes and unconventional punctuation. Although she wrote nearly 1800 poems during her lifetime, only a few were published during her lifetime. She was a private person and became increasingly reclusive in her later years. Dickinson died on May 15, 1886, in Amherst at the age of 55. Her work has since become highly regarded and continues to influence modern poetry.
List of some of his most famous works:
- The Napoleon of Notting Hill
- The Man Who Was Thursday
- Orthodoxy
- Heretics
- The Everlasting Man
- What’s Wrong with the World
- Father Brown detective stories
