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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index D > Emily Elizabeth Dickinson Quotes

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
(10 Dec 1830 - 15 May 1886)

American poet who wrote nearly 1800 poems, though only seven were published in her lifetime. When her first posthumous collection of her poetry appeared in 1890 it was received as the work of interesting but idiosyncratic minor poet. Through the 20th century, however, the originality and significance of her poetic accomplishments gained increasing recognition.

Science Quotes by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (9 quotes)

“Arcturus” is his other name-
I’d rather call him “Star.”
It’s very mean of Science
To go and interfere!
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
'Arcturus' (c.1859). The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (1970), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Arcturus (4)  |  Call (781)  |  Interfere (17)  |  Mean (810)  |  Name (359)  |  Other (2233)  |  Poem (104)  |  Star (460)

“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Faith is a Fine Invention (c.1860). T.W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd (eds.), Poems: Second Series (1892), 53.
Science quotes on:  |  Emergency (10)  |  Faith (209)  |  Gentlemen (4)  |  Invention (400)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Prudence (4)  |  See (1094)

I pull a flower from the woods,
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath,
And has her in a class.
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Science quotes on:  |  Botany (63)  |  Breath (61)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Count (107)  |  Flower (112)  |  Glass (94)  |  Monster (33)  |  Observation (593)  |  Pull (43)  |  Stamen (4)  |  Wood (97)  |  Woods (15)

Life is death we’re lengthy at, death the hinge to life.
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Letter to Louise and Frances Norcross (late May 1863), in Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Selected Letters (1986), 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Death (406)  |  Hinge (4)  |  Lengthy (3)  |  Life (1870)

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit—Life!
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
No. 108, 'Surgeons Must Be Very Careful', (1859). In The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1958), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Knife (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Must (1525)  |  Stir (23)  |  Surgeon (64)

The Chemical conviction
That Nought be lost
Enable in Disaster
My fractured Trust—
The Faces of the Atoms
If I shall see
How more the Finished Creatures
Departed Me!
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Creature (242)  |  Depart (5)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Enable (122)  |  Face (214)  |  Finish (62)  |  Fracture (7)  |  More (2558)  |  See (1094)  |  Trust (72)

The Chemical conviction
That Nought be lost
Enable in Disaster
My fractured Trust—
The Faces of the Atoms
If I shall see
How more the Finished Creatures
Departed Me!
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Creature (242)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Enable (122)  |  Face (214)  |  Finish (62)  |  More (2558)  |  See (1094)  |  Trust (72)

The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by-
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself-
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life-
Indebtedness to Oxygen
The Happy may repay,
But not the obligation
To Electricity-
It founds the Homes and decks the Days
And every clamor bright
Is but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying Light-
The Thought is quiet as a Flake-
A Crash without a Sound,
How Life’s reverberation
Is Explanation found-—
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Science quotes on:  |  Bolt (11)  |  Bright (81)  |  Crash (9)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Exchange (38)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Happy (108)  |  Home (184)  |  Indebtedness (4)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Missile (7)  |  Myself (211)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Noon (14)  |  Obligation (26)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Poem (104)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Rest (287)  |  Reverberation (3)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sound (187)  |  Still (614)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thunder (21)

To live is so startling it leaves little time for other occupations.
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
From Letter to T.W. Higginson (late 1872), in Thomas H Johnson (ed.), The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1969), 500.
Science quotes on:  |  Leave (138)  |  Little (717)  |  Live (650)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Other (2233)  |  Startle (6)  |  Startling (15)  |  Time (1911)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


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