“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”

—  Emily Dickinson, Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 6
Collected Poems (1993)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pa…" by Emily Dickinson?
Emily Dickinson photo
Emily Dickinson187
American poet 1830–1886

Related quotes

Emily Dickinson photo

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

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Stephen Grellet photo

“If I can anyway contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.”

Stephen Grellet (1773–1855) American Quaker missionary

Statement in The Spectator (1711), as quoted in The Reign of Queen Anne (1902) by Justin McCarthy
Misattributed

Joseph Addison photo

“If I can any way contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 1 (1 March 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The heart may freeze, or it can burn. The pain will ease and I can learn. There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as, my last.”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Source: Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

Margaret Atwood photo

“I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986

Willa Cather photo

“It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"A Chance Meeting"; first published in The Atlantic Monthly (1933)
Not Under Forty (1936)

Jeanette Winterson photo

“I am a glass man, but there is no light in me that can shine across the sea. I shall lead no one home, save no lives, not even my own.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping (2004)

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

David Mitchell photo

“A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, Monday, 13th January —, p. 528
Cloud Atlas (2004)

“My one abiding principle has been to translate everything – even puns. For although this is… an 'unfinished' novel, it was written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other. I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel has given me, I shall not have lived in vain.”

David Hawkes (sinologist) (1923–2009) British sinologist

Introduction to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 1: 'The Golden Days' (1973), p. 46
Preface to The Golden Days, 1973

Related topics