Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

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
The man, most man, works best for men: and, if most man indeed, he gets his manhood plainest from his soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
The English have a scornful insular way Of calling the French light.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Those tall flowering-reeds which stand In Arno, like a sheaf of scepters left But some remote dynasty of dead gods To suck the stream for ages and get green.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Yet how proud we are,
In daring to look down upon ourselves!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Geology, ethnology, what not? — (Greek endings, each the little passing bell That signifies some faith's about to die.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
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
The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
With her ankles sunken in asphodel She wept for the roses of the earth which fell.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And lilies are still lilies, pulled By smutty hands, though spotted from their white.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
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
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mountain gorses, do ye teach us
....
That the wisest word man reaches
Is the humblest he can speak?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
O Earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wader's heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And "giveth His beloved, sleep.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A great acacia, with its slender trunk
And overpoise of multitudinous leaves.
(In which a hundred fields might spill their dew
And intense verdure, yet find room enough)
Stood reconciling all the place with green.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Earth may embitter, not remove,
The love divinely given;
And e'en that mortal grief shall prove
The immortality of love,
And lead us nearer heaven.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning