Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Bible is an antique Volume – Written by faded Men

The only way to know if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain

To multiply the harms of Poverty, want and crime, is to be poor, to be wanting and criminal. To suffer with the suffering, to be poor with the poor, to be sick with the sick, to be criminal with the criminal, is to be rich in sympathy and in that which is more precious than money, to be well with the well, to be virtuous with the virtuous.

That it will never come again Is what makes life so sweet.

To live is so astounding it leaves little room for anything else.

The Soul's Superior instants Occur to Her – as if – A Child's discernment of the Novelties Of Paradise –

Crisis is a Hair – 'Tis the Hair that has a Bone – When we hear the Bone – we ache – When we feel the Hair – we moan –

The Way I read a Book – is not with Eye – But with a Mind – that understands – And feels – and thinks – and knows –

The Soul has Bandaged moments – When too appalled to stir – She feels some ghastly Fright come up And stop to look at her –

Renunciation – is a piercing Virtue – The letting go A Presence – for an Expectation –

The Zeroes – taught us – Phosphorus – We learned by their Decay – The Ruby in the Cavern – We found – when it was due –

The Luxury to apprehend An object that endureth So short a time that it is spent Before it has begun –

The Sun went down – no Sweet Repose Permitted on the Road – To look at what the Day brought forth Or what the Night bestowed.

The Past is such a curious Creature To look at, when we choose – A Man will go to buy a Book And think he buys a Rose –

The first Day's Night had come – And I had heard the Wind – And in the silence of the Heart A Creature stirring – then –

Forever – is composed of Nows – 'Tis not a different time – Except for Infiniteness – And Latitude of Home –

The Heart asks Pleasure – first – And then – Excuse from Pain – And then – those little Anodynes That deaden suffering –

Experience is the Angled Road Where all of us go – when we are grown –