Emily Dickinson Quotes

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.

I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all?

...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.

Was it not his Self, his small, fearful and proud Self, with which he had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered him again, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed him of happiness and filled him with fear?

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite.

People fear their hidden selves, afraid that they will burst out.

God defend me from myself.

There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us... It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

I suppose it’s comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse things to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

In martial arts, the biggest enemy is self. Inside you struggle because you want to prove something.

I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.

Sense (for a particular art, science, human being, and so forth) is divided spirit; self-restraint is consequently the result of self-creation and self-destruction.

When I was eleven I stopped dreaming the dreams that didn't come true, I stopped talking to people who didn't listen, I lost hope and I retreated. I assumed that the root of the problem was that I was too strange for the real world. That being the case, I created a charming and dynamic personality to make the necessary forays into the Outside, and I kept my strangeness for myself; my own peculiar jewels under lock and key.

[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.

I cannot endure the horror, the evil, which comes to self in solitude.

The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination.

I've got many, many demons that affect me on many, many levels. A few years ago, I was convinced of that - I thought I truly was possessed by the devil. I remember sitting through the Exorcist a dozen times, saying to myself, 'Yeah, I can relate to that. I really wish I knew why I've done some of the things I've done over the years. I don't know if I'm a medium for some outside source. Whatever it is, frankly, I hope it's not what I think it is - Satan.”

Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.

For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.