In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
— Emily Dickinson
If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.
I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.
I'm nobody, who are you?
Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.
The brain is wider than the sky.
Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.
Beauty is not caused. It is.
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
Where thou art, that is home.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.
Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.
I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.
God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.
Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.
Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.
My friends are my estate.
Saying nothing... sometimes says the most.
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
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.
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.
They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
Fortune befriends the bold.
Forever is composed of nows.
To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.
I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.
I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.
Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.
That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.
Dying is a wild night and a new road.
Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
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.
I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.
Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
