Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes (175 Quotes)

I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.

For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:

But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!

I sit beneath thy looks, as children do
In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through
Their happy eyelids from an unaverred
Yet prodigal inward joy.

Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.

Art for art,
And good for God Himself, the essential Good !

When we first met and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble....

And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air, Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair And they heard the words it said, 'Pan is dead great Pan is dead Pan, Pan is dead'

The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, Whose deeds, both great and small Are close-knot strands of an unbroken thread There love ennobles all. The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells The book of life the shining record tells. Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life-workings. A childs kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong Thou shalt serve thyself by every sense, Of service which thou renderest.

He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

But only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,--Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening!

Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth
With the glory thou hast won!

Could it mean
To last, a love set pendulous between
Sorrow and sorrow?

Beloved, is it thou
Or I, who makes me sad?

I knew the time would pass away,
And yet, beside the rose-tree wall,
Dear God, how seldom, if at all,
Did I look up to pray!

These nightingales will sing me mad!

A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss.

Years pass my life with them shall pass:
And soon, the cricket in the grass
And summer bird, shall louder sing
Than she who owns a minstrel's string.

I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read
Thy thought so in the letter.

At least it may be said
' Because the way is short, I thank thee, God.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read My books

Dare ye look at one another,
And the benediction speak?

My childhood from my life is parted,
My footstep from the moss which drew
Its fairy circle round: anew
The garden is deserted.

Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer sun.

Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

A grave, on which to rest from singing?

Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live
In thickets, and eat berries!

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

Guess now who holds thee' - Death', I said, but there The silver answer rang, . . . Not Death, but Love.'

A woman is always younger than a man at equal years.

A woman's always younger than a man of equal years.

And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine.

I miss the clear
Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled
Into the music of Heaven's undefiled,
Call me no longer.

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, ''A woman's function plainly is... to talk.'' Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed.

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.

By thunders of white silence.

Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.

I knock and cry, -Undone, undone!

But set a springe for him, 'mio ben',
My only good, my first last love!

But since he had The genius to be loved, why let him have The justice to be honoured in his grave.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

Each man has but one soul supplied,
And that's immortal.

From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.

A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.

But what have nightingales to do
In gloomy England, called the free.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.

It is not merely the likeness which is precious... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever It is the very sanctification of portraits I think -- and it is not at all monstrous in me to say that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced.