Quotes from book
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson photo

“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Variant: Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“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.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by,
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging,
I may remember him!”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Love, p. 172
Collected Poems (1993)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

1129: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Variant: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Context: p>Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —</p

Emily Dickinson photo

“I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: "'T will keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers,—
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

303: The Soul selects her own Society --
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Love, p. 167
Collected Poems (1993)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—
As if my Brain had split—
I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—
But could not make it fit.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“A charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld,—
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies,—
Lest interview annul a want
That image satisfies.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Life, p. 9
Collected Poems (1993)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“To see her is a picture-
To hear her is a tune-
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June-
To know her not-Affliction-
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the the Sun
Were shining in your Hand.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“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 book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson photo

“To be alive──is Power.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Similar authors

Emily Dickinson photo
Emily Dickinson187
American poet 1830–1886
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow202
American poet None
Walt Whitman photo
Walt Whitman181
American poet, essayist and journalist None
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet None
Charles Baudelaire photo
Charles Baudelaire133
French poet None
Mikhail Lermontov photo
Mikhail Lermontov34
Russian writer, poet and painter None
Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Aleksandr Pushkin33
Russian poet None
Robert Southey photo
Robert Southey51
British poet None
Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel50
Swiss philosopher and poet None
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley246
English Romantic poet None