Emily Dickinson

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

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.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

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 The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

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.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

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

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Where thou art, that is home.

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.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.