And make sure to read these and .
1. “I dwell in possibility.”
2. “We turn not older with years but newer every day.”
3. “Forever is composed of nows.”
4. “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tunes without the words, and never stops at all.”
5. “I never had a . I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.”
6. “Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.”
7. “Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”
8. “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”
9. “Find ecstasy in life, the mere sense of living is joy enough.”
10. “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
11. “To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
12. “I do not like the man who squanders life for fame. Give me the man who living, makes a name.”
13. “I’m nobody, who are you?”
14. “Anger as soon as fed is dead. ‘Tis starving makes it fat.”
15. “How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!”
16. “A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”
17. “A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for the king.”
18. “Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.”
19. “To make clover, and a bee, and revery. The revery alone will do, if bees are few.”
20. “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold, no fire can ever warm me—I know that is poetry.”
21. “A leaps the highest.”
22. “Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.”
23. “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”
24. “Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”
25. “Some keep the Sabbath going to church. I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister and an orchard for a dome.”
26. “We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.”
27. “Fame is a bee. It has a song. It has a sting. Ah, too, it has a wing.”
28. “Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”
29. “We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer, till it is an antique fashion show like costumes grandsires wore.”
30. “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.”
31. “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.”
32. “That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.”
33. “This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me.”
34. “Surgeons must be very careful when they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions, stirs the culprit life!”
35. “The heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care.”
36. “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
37. “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
38. “I argue, thee, that love is life and life hath immortality.”
39. “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.”
40. “Heart, we will forget him—you and I—tonight! You must forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.”
41. “My friends are my estate.”
42. “Your absence insanes me so—I do not feel so peaceful when you are gone from me.”
43. “Hold dear to for it is a scary and confusing world without them.”
44. “Shame need not crouch. In such an earth as ours. Stand—stand erect. The universe is yours.”
45. “Love is like the wild rose-briar.”
46. “Pardon my sanity in a world insane.”
47. “Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”
48. “Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself.”
49. “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
50. “Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat.”
51. “I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness.”
52. “We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother, but when she became our child, the affection came.”
53. “My love for those I love—not many—not very many, but don’t I love them so?”
54. “Love is its own rescue for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.”
55. “Till I loved, I never lived.”
56. “How happy is the little stone, that rambles in the road alone and doesn’t care about careers. And exigencies never fear whose coat of elemental brown. A passing universe put on, and independent as the sun. Associates or glows alone, fulfilling absolute decree in casual simplicity.”
57. “Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true.”
58. “Not with a club, the heart is broken nor with a stone. A whip so small you could not see it I’ve known.”
59. “That love is all there is, is all we know of love.”
60. “My best acquaintances are those with whom I spoke no word.”
61. “Luck is not chance, it’s toil fortune’s expensive smile is earned.”
62. “Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”
63. “I cannot live with you, it would be life, and life is over there behind the shelf.”
64. “I tasted life.”
65. “To be alive is power.”
66. “One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”
67. “I started early, took my dog, and visited the sea. The mermaids in the basement came out to look at me.”
68. “The moon was but a chin of gold. A night or two ago, and now she turns her perfect face upon the world below.”
69. “My life closed twice before its close. It yet remains to see if immortality unveils a third event to me.”
70. “I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes. I wonder if it weighs like mine or has an easier size.”
71. “Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.”
72. “They say that ‘time assuages.’ Time never did assuage. An actual suffering strengthens, as sinews do, with age.Time is a test of trouble, but not a remedy. If such it proves, it proves too there was no malady.”
73. “A word that breathes distinctly. Has not the power to die.”
74. “It was not death, for I stood up and all the dead lie down. It was not night, for all the bells. Put out their tongues, for noon.”
75. “The bustle in a house. The morning after death is solemnest of industries. Enacted upon earth, the sweeping up the heart and putting love away we shall not want to use again until eternity.”
76. “Each that we lose takes part of us. A crescent still abides, which like the moon, some turbid night is summoned by the tides.”
77. “I wonder if it hurts to live and if they have to try, and whether they could choose between, they would not rather die.”
78. “I died for beauty, but was scarce. Adjusted in the tomb, when one who died for truth was laid in an adjoining room.”
79. “Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
80. “Sometimes I write one, and I look at it until it begins to shine.”
81. “Truth is such a rare thing, it is delighted to tell it.”
82. “Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun—if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”
83. “Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.”
84. “The truth I do not dare to know I muffle with a jest.”
85. “It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
86. “You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself.”
87. “The spreading wide my narrow hands to gather paradise.”
88. “The brain is wider than the sky.”
89. “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.”
90. “Write me of hope, and love, and hearts that endured.”
91. “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.”
92. “To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.”
93. “A power of a must be the aptitude to fly. Meadows of majesty concedes and easy sweeps of sky.”
94. “I held a jewel in my fingers and went to sleep. The day was warm, and winds were prosy, I said, ‘Twill keep.’”
95. “Faith is a fine invention when gentlemen can see, but microscopes are prudent in an emergency.”
96. “The sun just touched the morning. The morning, happy thing. Supposed that he had come to dwell, and life would be all spring.”
97. “I hope your rambles have been sweet, and your reveries spacious.”
98. “How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world, you must have noticed them in the street, how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?”
99. “It might be lonelier without the loneliness. I’m so accustomed to my fate, perhaps the other, peace.”
100. “I don’t profess to be profound, but I do lay claim to common sense.”
101. “Nature is a haunted house.”
102. “These are the days when birds come back, a very few, a bird or two, to take a backward look.”
103. “The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret that I am not a bee.”
104. “I had no portrait now, but I 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.”
105. “Nature is our eldest mother, she will do no harm.”
106. “I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.”
107. “Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.”
108. “Tis harder knowing it is due, than knowing it is here.”
109. “Earth is crammed with heaven.”
110. “The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee. A clover, any time, to him, is aristocracy.”
111. “The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul—books.”
112. “But a book is only the heart’s portrait, every page a pulse.”
113. “The only commandment I ever obeyed—’Consider the Lilies.’”
114. “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.”
115. “I wish you a kinder sea.”
116. “I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found it? You’ll know it by the rows of stars around it’s forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it, yet to my frugal eye of more esteem than ducats. Oh! find it sir, for me!”
117. “The only secret people keep is immortality.”
118. “Pain has an element of blank. It cannot recollect. When it begun, or if there were a time when it was not. It has no future, but itself. Its infinite contains its past, enlightened to perceive new periods of pain.”
119. “Much madness is divinest sense, to a discerning eye.”
120. “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.”
121. “To see the summer sky is poetry, though never in a book it lies. True poems flee.”
122. “I can wade grief whole pools of it. I’m used to that, but the least push of joy breaks up my feet. And I tip drunk let no pebble smile ’twas the new liquor, that was all!”
123. “A precious mouldering pleasure is to meet an antique book, in just the dress his century wore, a privilege, I think.”
124. “Existence has overpowered books. Today I slew a mushroom.”
125. “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things.”
126. “People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
127. “Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.”
128. “Those who have not found the heaven below will fail of it above.”
129. “The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.”
130. “Fortune befriends the bold.”
131. “I never saw a moor. I never saw the sea, yet I know how the heather looks. And what a wave must be.”
132. “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.”
133. “I see thee better in the dark. I do not need a light.”
134. “The soul selects her own society.”
135. “I have been bent and broken, but I hope into a better shape.”
136. “A great hope fell! You heard no noise. The ruin was within.”
137. “After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The nerves sit ceremoniously, like tombs. The stiff heart questions was it he, that bore, and yesterday, or centuries before?”
138. “I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels the work.”
139. “Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.”
140. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
141. “The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.”
142. “In this short life that only lasts an hour, how much, how little is within our power.”
143. “Beauty is not caused. It is.”
144. “Portraits are to daily faces, as an evening west. To a fine, pedantic sunshine in a satin vest.”
145. “When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his home, we turn away. But when he confides to us that he is ‘acquainted with grief,’ we listen, for that also is an acquaintance of our own.”
146. “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.”
147. “Where thou art, that is home.”
148. “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.”
149. “Phosphorescence—now there’s a word to lift your hat to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that’s the genius behind poetry.”
150. “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!”
151. “Who has not found the heaven below will fail of it above. God’s residence is next to mine.”
152. “His furniture is love.”
153. “I never spoke with God, nor visited in heaven, yet certain am I of the spot, as if a chart were given.”
154. “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.”
155. “They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.”
156. “We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.”
157. “Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind—thy windy will to bear!”
158. “Faith slips and laughs, and rallies.”
159. “When you have done praying, tell me that my thoughts may dim. Haste! Lest while you’re lagging, I may remember him!”
160. “An ear can break a human heart as quickly as a spear, we wish the ear had not a heart so dangerously near.”
161. “A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without a corporeal friend.”
162. “Friendship like the holly tree.”
163. “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.”
164. “I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still.”
165. “The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.”
166. “Open me carefully.”
167. “They say that ‘home is where the heart is.’ I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings.”
168. “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. Espousing the former is not defending the latter.”
169. “I felt it shelter to speak to you.”
170. “She dealt her pretty words like blades, how glittering they shone and everyone unbarred a nerve or wantoned with a bone.”
171. “Such is the force of happiness. The least can lift a ton assisted by its stimulus.”
172. “Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.”
173. “If your nerve, deny you. Go above your nerve.”
174. “Witchcraft was hung, in history, but history and I find all the witchcraft that we need around us, everyday.”
175. “Judge tenderly of me.”
176. “Bring me the sunset in a cup.”
177. “There’s a certain slant of light, on winter afternoons, that oppresses, like the weight of cathedral tunes.”
178. “Art is a house that tries to be haunted.”
179. “You cannot fold a flood and put it in a drawer, because the winds would find it out and tell your cedar floor.”
180. “Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea. Past the houses, past the headlands. Into deep eternity! Bred as we, among the mountains. Can the sailor understand the divine intoxication of the first league out from land?”
181. “Tis not that dying hurts us so. Tis living hurts us more.”
182. “To shut your eyes is to travel.”
183. “Inebriate of air, am I. And debauchee of dew reeling through endless summer days. From inns of molten blue.”
184. “My business is circumference.”
185. “Memory is a strange bell—jubilee, and knell.”
186. “But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising.”
187. “I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear.”
188. “There is a pain so utter, it swallows being up. The covers the abyss with a trance. So memory can step around, across, upon it.”
189. “We journey to the day and tell each other how we sang to keep the dark away.”
