Top 100 Elizabeth Barrett Quotes
#1. [On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] ... for finish, and melody of versification, there is nothing approaching to Miss Barrett in this day, or in any other - also for diction. Her words paint.
Mary Russell Mitford
#2. Guess now who holds thee?" - "Death," I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, - "Not Death, but Love." - ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Wayne W. Dyer
#3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?
Dorothy Fields
#4. [On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] Her sweetness of character is even beyond her genius.
Mary Russell Mitford
#5. 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
#7. 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
#8. Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me
wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#9. At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#10. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#18. God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in it.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#19. 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!"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#25. 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
#26. As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#27. My love for him was so exquisitely pure that if we all were capable of giving and receiving such a beautiful gift the world would be a far more brilliant place; I think we'd all be poets.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#28. 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
#29. The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#30. With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#32. 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
#36. My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#38. She lived, we'll say,
A harmless life, she called a
virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all
(But that she had not lived enough to know)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#39. O rose, who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#40. I would not be a rose upon the wall
A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me,
It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh!
I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,
Than lie in a great queen's bosom.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#43. O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#45. The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#52. O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief
holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#53. What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#54. How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#55. Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat ... or a girl?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#56. I, who had had my heart full for hours, took advantage of an early moment of solitude, to cry in it very bitterly. Suddenly a little hairy head thrust itself from behind my pillow into my face, rubbing its ears and nose against me in a responsive agitation, and drying the tears as they came.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#57. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#59. The denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#60. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Browning Elizabeth Barrett
#61. I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#63. You believe
In God, for your part?
that He who makes
Can make good things from ill things, best from worst,
As men plant tulips upon dunghills when
They wish them finest.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#64. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#67. 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
#68. Through heaven and earth
God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
As color follows light. He overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love; His lightnings go abroad,
His pity may do so, His angels must,
Whene'er He gives them charges.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#70. 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
#72. But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#74. 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
#80. This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#81. 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
#84. Very whitely still The lilies of our lives may reassure Their blossoms from their roots, accessible Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer; Growing straight out of man's reach, on the hill. God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#85. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#94. 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
#95. Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is. For gift or grace, surpassing this
He giveth His beloved sleep.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#96. 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
#97. The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#98. A child's 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 be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#99. Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, Tired of all the playing, Sleep with smile the sweeter for That you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand Golden lights serenely
One cheek, pushed out by the hand, Folds the dimple inly.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
