Browse 10 quotations connecting Emily Dickinson with Deep, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include A Well — Emily Dickinson, Beclouded — Emily Dickinson, Earth Is Short — Emily Dickinson. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include A Well — Emily Dickinson, Beclouded — Emily Dickinson, Earth Is Short — Emily Dickinson.
“But nature is a stranger yet; The ones that cite her most Have never passed her haunted house, Nor simplified her ghost.”
Even close observers do not fully explain nature in this ending; familiarity with natural objects leaves room for strangeness, uncertainty and intellectual humility.
Source note: “A Well,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The ghost and haunted-house language is metaphorical, emphasizing nature's unresolved mystery.
“The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go.”
Low cloud, uncertain snow and cramped rural space give the weather a subdued emotional atmosphere without turning the natural scene into a simple moral lesson.
Source note: “Beclouded,” in Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. Nature is personified in the poem; the editorial heading and punctuation reflect the early printed edition.
“I reason, earth is short, And anguish absolute, And many hurt; But what of that?”
The poem begins from mortality and undeniable anguish, then presses beyond those observations by asking what explanatory or consoling conclusion can actually follow from them.
Source note: “Earth Is Short,” Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem proceeds into questions about heaven and God; its religious questions remain questions rather than verified metaphysical claims.
“I measure every grief I meet With analytic eyes; I wonder if it weighs like mine, Or has an easier size.”
Personal grief becomes a lens for noticing other people's suffering, with the speaker comparing losses while admitting that another person's burden cannot be known directly.
Source note: “Griefs,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem explores comparison and recognition of suffering rather than offering a clinical scale for grief.
“I never lost as much but twice, And that was in the sod; Twice have I stood a beggar Before the door of God!”
Two deaths are remembered as losses so severe that the speaker figures herself as spiritually impoverished and dependent before God.
Source note: Poem in Poems: First Series (1890), represented by its opening line for source disambiguation; Project Gutenberg #12242. Its theological language belongs to the lyric speaker.
“My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me.”
The speaker treats profound separations as deaths within a still-living life, leaving the final meaning of another separation to the poem's religious-metaphysical horizon.
Source note: “Parting,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem is lyric and metaphysical; its language of immortality is not presented as empirical evidence about an afterlife.
“Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.”
People who lack an achievement may understand its value more intensely because distance and deprivation make the desire clearer.
Source note: Opening line of Poem 112; Dickinson links desire with the sharpness of perceived value.
““Hope” is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul —”
Dickinson makes hope feel small, persistent, and alive: an inner presence that keeps singing through difficult conditions.
Source note: Opening lines; punctuation follows a common scholarly transcription.
“Forever — is composed of Nows —”
The future and the infinite are made from successive present moments, giving ordinary time a larger philosophical significance.
Source note: Poem 690; Dickinson builds the abstract idea of eternity from individual present moments.
“Unable are the loved to die — For Love is Immortality —”
The poem treats love as a form of continuity that resists the finality of physical death.
Source note: Opening lines.