Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
An ignorance of means may minister
To greatness, but an ignorance of aims
Makes it impossible to be great at all.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear, and fall, and miss Thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And the highest fame was never reached except
By what was aimed above it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Many a fervid man
Writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labor done;
Then bring your gauges.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past —
Oh, never call it loving!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away,
And yet my days go on, go on. And cold before my summer's done,
And deaf in Nature's general tune,
And fallen too low for special fear,
And here, with hope no longer here,
While the tears drop, my days go on.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My soul,
At poetry's divine first finger-touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If I married him,
I would not dare to call my soul my own,
Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought
And every heart-beat down there in the bill,–
Not one found honestly deductible
From any use that pleased him!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Of writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,—
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps... as thou must sing... alone, aloof.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And I said in underbreath —
All our life is mixed with death, —
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God's greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness, —
Round our restlessness, His rest.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile —her look —her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I should like you to know Papa — ah, you smile at my saying Papa — I am too old for such a baby-word I know — but he likes to be called so, and therefore I don't like to call him otherwise even in thought — I heard him say once 'If they leave off calling me "Papa," I shall think they have left off loving me.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning