Emily Dickinson · 716 pages
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“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“A Word is Dead
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of 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,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Much Madness Is Divinest Sense
Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you're straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of 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, quote from The Complete Poems of 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 –
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –
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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf ”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“The Soul selects her own Society.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees.
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow
by fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten
Your brain to bubble cool,-
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“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, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness —
I'm so accustomed to my Fate —
Perhaps the Other — Peace —
Would interrupt the Dark —
And crowd the little Room —
Too scant — by Cubits — to contain
The Sacrament — of Him —
I am not used to Hope —
It might intrude upon —
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place —
Ordained to Suffering —
It might be easier
To fail — with Land in Sight —
Than gain — My Blue Peninsula —
To perish — of Delight —
F535 (1863) J405”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“I HIDE myself within my flower
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness...”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside -
The Brain is deeper than the sea -
For- hold them - Blue to Blue -
The one the other will absorb -
As Sponges - Buckets - do -
The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“I stepped from Plank to Plank
So slow and cautiously
The Stars about my Head I felt,
About my Feet the Sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch —
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“A Word that Breathes Distinctly
Has not the Power to Die”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“A precious mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind.
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,
And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were born.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize just so.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“Stars are important," I say, laughing.
"Sure, but why not more poems about the sun? The sun is also a star, and it's our most important one. That alone should be worth a poem or two.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from The Sun Is Also a Star
“Okay. He had a point but it wasn’t like I could tell him anything. I
could see me now: Guess what? You ever watch Clash of the Titans or
read any Greek fables? Well those gods are real and yeah, I’m sort of
a descendant of them. Kind of like the stepchild no one wants to claim.
Oh, and I hadn’t even been around mortals until three years ago. Can
we still be friends?”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Daimon
“Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch'd and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar'd him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,-- the publick Executions and Whippings, the open'd flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites.... Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen'd here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,-- that at the end no one understood what they said as they died.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from Mason & Dixon
“Just a story. It had become one of the defining truths of my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. It was never just a story. I would know: a story had swallowed my whole life.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
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