Emily Dickinson
Revolutionary American poet of interiority
Most quoted
"The Robin’s my Criterion for Tune – Because I grow – where Robins do – But, were I Cuckoo born – I’d swear by him – The ode familiar – rules the Noon – The Buttercup’s, my Whim for Bloom – Because, we’re Orchard sprung – But, were I Britain born, I’d Daisies spurn – None but the Nut – October fit – Because, through dropping it, The Seasons flit – I’m taught – Without the Snow’s Tableau Winter, were lie – to me – Because I had not seen it go – But, this – makes not the Robin poor – Nor, of the Nut, deprive the Jay – Because the seasons flit away –"
— from Poem 347, 1862
"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"
— from Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"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 –"
— from Poem 508, 1862
All quotes by Emily Dickinson (267)
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.
Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies
The Brain – is wider than the Sky – For – put them side by side – The one the other will contain – With ease – and You – beside –
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain;
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies.
The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door –
Forever is composed of nows.
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.
Dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose –
A Word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
The only News I know Is Bulletins all Day From Immortality.
Much Madness is divinest Sense – To a discerning Eye –
The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering;
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us - don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.
We grow accustomed to the Dark – When Light is put away –
Saying nothing sometimes says the most.
The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind –
Contemporaries of Emily Dickinson
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).