Quotes & Sayings About Death By Emily Dickinson

Death is like the insect
Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
But decoyed may be.
Bait it with the balsam,
Seek it with the saw,
Baffle, if it cost you
Everything you are.
Then, if it have burrowed
Out of reach of skill -
Wring the tree and leave it,
'Tis the vermin's will.
Of Nature I shall have enough
When I have entered these
Entitled to a Bumble bee's
Familiarities. — Emily Dickinson

You'll find it-when you try to die- The Easier to let go- For recollecting such as went- You could not spare-you know. — Emily Dickinson

And I think of Emily Dickinson, and my favorite poem about death, and the line that reads "I could not see to see." This is the line Ms. Sylvia copied onto the board in her beautiful cursive, which spirals away like blindweed tendrils, and then she asked the class what it might mean. I didn't even have to think about it. I just knew. To see to see, which is not exactly what Dickinson wrote, means knowing how to look. How to look to understand. How to look without your eyes. And to die, is not to see at all. Of course, I didn't actually say this out loud. — Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun. — Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close — Emily Dickinson

A wounded deer leaps highest, I've heard the hunter tell; 'Tis but the ecstasy of death, And then the brake is still. The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs,, A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings Mirth is mail of anguish, In which its cautious arm Lest anybody spy the blood And, you're hurt exclaim. — Emily Dickinson

The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride,
Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide,
Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,
And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue. — Emily Dickinson

I notice where Death has been introduced, he frequently calls, making it desirable to forestall his advances. — Emily Dickinson

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 — Emily Dickinson

We do not play on Graves
Because there isn't Room
Besides - it isn't even - it slants
And People come
And put a Flower on it
And hang their faces so
We're fearing that their Hearts will drop
And crush our pretty play
And so we move as far
As Enemies - away
Just looking round to see how far
It is - Occasionally - — Emily Dickinson

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.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair. — Emily Dickinson

The Overtakelessness of Those
Who have accomplished Death -
Majestic is to me beyond
The majesties of Earth -
The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh -
And takes a fine aerial gait
Beyond the Writ of Touch. — Emily Dickinson

Just girt me for the onset with Eternity,
When breath blew back,
And on the other side
I heard recede the disappointed tide! — Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names. — Emily Dickinson

I could not stop for death and he did not stop for me. — Emily Dickinson

Looking at Death, is Dying - ... — Emily Dickinson

Life is death we're lengthy at — Emily Dickinson

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell. — Emily Dickinson

I am made to think, not for the first time, that in my writing I have plunged ahead-head-on, heedlessly one might say-or 'fearlessly'- into my own future: this time of utter raw anguished loss. Though I may have had, since adolescence, a kind of intellectual/literary precocity, I had not experienced much;nor would I experience much until I was well into middle age-the illnesses and deaths of my parents, this unexpected death of my husband. We play at paste till qualified for pearl says Emily Dickinson. Playing at paste is much of our early lives. And then, with the violence of a door slammed shut by wind rushing through a house, life catches up with us. — Joyce Carol Oates

Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence. — Emily Dickinson

Suspense-is Hostiler than Death-Death- tho soever Broad, Is just Death, and cannot increase- Suspense-does not conclude-. — Emily Dickinson

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death,
The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust" -
Death doubts it -
Argues from the Ground -
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay. — Emily Dickinson

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the lune
A wind with fingers goes.
They perished in the seamless grass,
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face — Emily Dickinson

My dying tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet, but Death was much of Mob as I could master-then-And when far afterward-a sudden light on Orchards, or a new fashion in the wind troubled my attention- I felt a palsy, here- the Verses just relieve- (174) — Emily Dickinson

Death is the common right Of toads and men, - Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine. — Emily Dickinson

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath. — Emily Dickinson

She died
this was the way she died;
And when her breath was done,
Took up her simple wardrobe
And started for the sun.
Her little figure at the gate
The angels must have spied,
Since I could never find her
Upon the mortal side. — Emily Dickinson

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. — Emily Dickinson

Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last. It is a stealthy wooing; conducted first by pallid innuendos and dim approach, but brave at last with bugles. — Emily Dickinson

Life is but Life! And Death, but Death!
Bliss is but Bliss, and Breath but Breath! — Emily Dickinson

I meant to find her when I came;
Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.
I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.
To wander now is my abode;
To rest, - to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me. — Emily Dickinson

All but Death, can be Adjusted -
Dynasties repaired -
Systems - settled in their Sockets -
Citadels dissolved . . . — Emily Dickinson

I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;
Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you. — Emily Dickinson

That short, potential stir That each can make but once, That bustle so illustrious Tis almost consequence, Is the eclat of death. — Emily Dickinson

And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege? — Emily Dickinson

A Toad, can die of Light - Death is the Common Right Of Toads and Men — Emily Dickinson