Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Love Quotes

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–'
'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief)
'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone,
And none was left to love in all the world.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown!
No mortal grief deserves that crown.
O supreme Love, chief misery,
The sharp regalia are for Thee
Whose days eternally go on!' For us, — whatever's undergone,
Thou knowest, willest what is done,
Grief may be joy misunderstood;
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me — toll
The silver iterance! — only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Death forerunneth Love to win "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I cannot speak
In happy tones; the tear drops on my cheek
Show I am sad;
But I can speak
Of grace to suffer with submission meek,
Until made glad.
I cannot feel
That all is well, when dark'ning clouds conceal
The shining sun;
But then I know
God lives and loves; and say, since it is so,
"Thy will be done."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I praise Thee while my days go on;
I love Thee while my days go on:
Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
With emptied arms and treasure lost,
I thank Thee while my days go on. And having in thy life-depth thrown
Being and suffering (which are one),
As a child drops his pebble small
Down some deep well, and hears it fall
Smiling — so I. THY DAYS GO ON.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot
My soul's full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from life that disappears!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I loved you yesterday.. I love you to-day.. I shall love you to-morrow. Every day I am yours.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Whoever lives true life will love true love.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.

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
For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The critics could never mortify me out of heart — because I love poetry for its own sake, — and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In the pure loves of child and mother! —
Two human loves make one divine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death," I said. But there
The silver answer rang—"Not Death, but Love."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll-
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll
The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning