Top 100 Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
#1. That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow But thinking of a wreath, ... I like such ivy; bold to leap a height 'Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too (And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#2. Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#3. At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#4. Tis aye a solemn thing to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The unrevealed mystery
Of its Adam's taint and woe,
Which, when they revealed lie,
Will not let it slumber so.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#5. Our Euripides the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
and his touchings of things common
Till they rose to meet the spheres.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#6. Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#10. How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue,
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A little shade, the only one;
But shadows ever man pursue.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#11. The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,
And placed it by thee on a golden throne,
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#13. O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#15. O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#21. Where Christ brings His cross He brings His presence; and where He is none are desolate, and there is no room for despair.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#22. The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself
sublimely helpless and impotent
I had done living I thought
Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones,
that there seemed no room for tears.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#25. When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#28. And friends, dear friends,
when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, And gone my bier ye come to weep, Let One, most loving of you all, Say, Not a tear must o'er her fall; He giveth His beloved sleep.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#30. What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#32. World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#33. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And, ever since, it grew more clean and white.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#34. 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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#36. The great chasm between the thing I say, & the thing I would say, wd be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#37. I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud -
I build it bright to see, -
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#38. The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#41. And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#42. You may write twenty lines one day
or even three like Euripides in three days
and a hundred lines in one more day
and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#44. You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#45. And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#47. XI
I sang his name instead of song;
Over and over I sang his name:
Backward and forward I sang it along,
With my sweetest notes, it was still the same!
I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
Might never guess, from what they could hear,
That all the song was a name.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#48. The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete, - -
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#49. The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#54. God keeps a niche
In Heaven, to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces, and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty, glorified,
New Memnons singing in the great God-light.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#58. Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll-
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll
The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#62. How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing - of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#64. For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#65. But since he had The genius to be loved, why let him have The justice to be honoured in his grave.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#66. There's nothing great Nor small, has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#69. Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#71. An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#72. The tyrant should take heed to what he doth,
Since every victim-carrion turns to use,
And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth,
Against each piled injustice.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#73. There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#76. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe, - but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#77. You were made perfectly to be loved and surely I have loved you in the idea of you my whole life long.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#78. Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,
And the drops will slacken so; Weep, weep
and the watch thou keepest, With a quicker count will go. Think,
the shadow on the dial For the nature most undone, Marks the passing of the trial, Proves the presence of the sun.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#85. A cheerful genius suits the times, / And all true poets laugh unquenchably / Like Shakespeare and the gods.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#86. The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of they soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me ...
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#88. Life treads on life, and heart on heart; We press too close in church and mart To keep a dream or grave apart.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#89. I wish I were the lily's leaf To fade upon that bosom warm, Content to wither, pale and brief, The trophy of thy paler form.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#90. And there my little doves did sit With feathers softly brown And glittering eyes that showed their right To general Nature's deep delight.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#93. Yet half the beast is the great god Pan, To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain
For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#99. Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song into our deep, dear silence.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
