Emily Dickinson was a revolutionary poet who challenged existing forms of poetry and art at the time. Her subjects were often centered around darker themes like Death and she used concepts like Transcendentalism to write in her distinct elliptical form of language. She found a way to make the abstract real and tangible. Check out the top Emily Dickenson quotes.
52 Emily Dickinson Quotes That Are Pure Art
Emily Dickinson Quotes That Inspire
#1. “The brain is wider than the sky.” — Emily Dickinson.
#2. “Forever is composed of nows.” — Emily Dickinson.
#3. “Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.” — Emily Dickinson.
#4. “A wounded deer leaps the highest.” — Emily Dickinson.
#5. “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.
#6. “I dwell in possibility.” — Emily Dickinson.
#7. “Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.” — Emily Dickinson.
#8. “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” — Emily Dickinson.
#9. “Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” — Emily Dickinson.
#10. “Anger as soon as fed is dead,’ Tis starving makes it fat.” — Emily Dickinson, Poems.
Emily Dickinson Quotes About Love
#11. “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.” — Emily Dickinson.
#12. “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” — Emily Dickinson.
#13. “They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine.” — Emily Dickinson.
#14. “Love, thou art deep. I cannot cross thee. But, were there Two Instead of One. Rower and Yacht. Some sovereign Summer. Who knows? But we’d reach the Sun?” — Emily Dickinson, Love Thou Art High.
#15. “That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.” — Emily Dickinson.
#16. “To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” — Emily Dickinson.
#17. “I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.” — Emily Dickinson.
#18. “Where thou art, that is home.” — Emily Dickinson.
#19. “We outgrow love like other things, and put it in the drawer, till it an antique fashion shows, like costumes grandsires wore.” — Emily Dickinson, We Outgrow Love Like Other Things.
Emily Dickinson Quotes on Friendship
#20. “A shady friend for torrid days, is easier to find, than one of higher temperature, for frigid hour of mind.” — Emily Dickinson, A Shady Friend for Torrid Days.
#21. “My only sketch, profile, of Heaven is a large blue sky, and larger than the biggest I have seen in June – and in it are my friends – every one of them.” — Emily Dickinson.
#22. “My friends are my estate.” — Emily Dickinson, Letter to Samuel Bowles, Aug. 1858 or ’59
Emily Dickinson Quotes on Nature
#23. “Some keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home, With a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.” — Emily Dickinson, Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church.
#24. “How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!” — Emily Dickinson.
#25. “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And reverie. The reverie alone will do, if bees are few.” — Emily Dickinson.
#26. “Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.” — Emily Dickinson.
#27. “Nature, like us is sometimes caught without her diadem.” — Emily Dickinson
#28. “I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, and what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, nor visited in Heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot, as if a chart were given.” — Emily Dickinson.
#29. “This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me. The simple news that nature told with tender majesty.” — Emily Dickinson.
#30. “The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.” — Emily Dickinson.
#31. “And softly through the altered air, hurries a timid leaf.” — Emily Dickinson.
#32. “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, The Sun- Just Touched the Morning.
#33. “His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee’s experience, Of clovers and of noon!” — Emily Dickinson, The Bee.
Emily Dickinson Quotes on Art and Poetry
#34. “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 who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.” — Emily Dickinson.
#35. “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.
#36. “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.
#37. “There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.” — Emily Dickinson.
#38. “This world is not conclusion. A sequel stands beyond. Invisible as music, but positive, as sound.” — Emily Dickinson.
#39. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” — Emily Dickinson.
#40. “A word is dead when it is said. Some say. I say it just begins to live that day.” — Emily Dickinson.
#41. “Nature is a haunted house — but Art — a House that tries to be haunted.” — Emily Dickinson.
Emily Dickinson Quotes on Death
#42. “A death-blow is a life-blow to some. Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when they died, vitality begun?” — Emily Dickinson, A Death Blow Is A Life Blow to Some
#43. “Because I could not stop for Death. He kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves. And Immortality.” — Emily Dickinson, Because I Could Not Stop for Death.
#44. “While I was fearing it, it came, but came with less of fear, because that fearing it so long, had almost made it dear.” — Emily Dickinson, The Inevitable.
#45. “The Loneliness One dare not sound. And would as soon surmise. As in its Grave go plumbing. To ascertain the size. The Loneliness whose worst alarm Is lest itself should see. And perish from before itself.” — Emily Dickinson, The Loneliness One Dare Not Sound.
#46. “For just a scrutiny. The horror not to be surveyed. But skirted in the dark with consciousness suspended. And Being under Lock. I fear me this is Loneliness. The Maker of the soul. Its Caverns and its Corridors. Illuminate or seal.” — Emily Dickinson, The Loneliness One Dare Not Sound.
#47. “It’s such a little thing to weep, so short a thing to sigh; And yet by trades the size of these. We men and women die!” — Emily Dickinson, It’s Such A Little Thing to Weep.
#48. “Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn. Indicative that suns go down. The notice to the startled grass that darkness is about to pass.” — Emily Dickinson, Presentiment Is That Long Shadow on The Lawn”.
#49. “Death is a Dialogue between The Spirit and the Dust.” — Emily Dickinson, Death Is A Dialogue.
#50. “The dying need but little, dear. A glass of water’s all. A flower’s unobtrusive face. To punctuate the wall. A fan, perhaps, a friend’s regret and certainty that one. No color in the rainbow. Perceive, when you are gone.” — Emily Dickinson, The Dying Need but Little, Dear.
#51. “Death’s Waylaying not the sharpest of the thefts of Time. There Marauds a sorer Robber. Silence is his name. No assault, nor any menace. Doth betoken him. But from life’s consummate cluster. He supplants the Balm.” — Emily Dickinson, Death’s Waylaying Not the Sharpest.
Conclusion
Dickinson defied the constructs of her elements and her writing reflects that. Her writing was often described by her as a “moment of escape”. It continues to draw readers in for tiny moments of escape and freedom in its divisive style and tone. Her quotes are as famous as her choice of punctuation and can be seen apart from the other writers of her time.
