Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd — well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Therefore to this dog will I,
Tenderly not scornfully,
Render praise and favor:
With my hand upon his head,
Is my benediction said
Therefore and for ever.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
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
The face, which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away —
And yet my days go on, go on.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith — which is... which is... that let us say and do what we please and can... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women — of the intellect... not by any means, of the moral nature — and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Nosegays! leave them for the waking,
Throw them earthward where they grew
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto.
Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Deep violets, you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you, Without a thought disloyal.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You smell a rose through a fence: If two should smell it, what matter?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
When God helps all the workers for His world,
The singers shall have help of Him, not last.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Free men freely work: Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.

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

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
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
I walked on, musing with myself... whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not help Our physics...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high.
Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low.
The universe's inward voices cry
"Amen" to either song of joy and woe.
Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning