Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

For summer has a close, And pansies bloom not in the snows.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
There's too much abstract willing, purposing, In this poor world. We talk by aggregates, And think by systems and being used to face Our evils in statistics, are inclined To cap them with unreal remedies Drawn out in haste on the other side.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
He likes the poor things of the world the best, I would not, therefore, if I could be rich. It pleases him to stoop for buttercups..

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sweet verbena which, being brushed against, Will hold us three hours after by the smell In spite of long walks on the windy hills.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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