Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Soul 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
And truly, I reiterate,.. nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

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

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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since I first heard the footsteps of thy soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Souls are gregarious in a sense, but no soul touches another, as a general rule.

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
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
The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And we talk'd — oh, how we talk'd! her voice so cadenc'd in the talking,
Made another singing — of the soul! a music without bars —
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking,
Brought interposition worthy — sweet, — as skies about the stars,
And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Here's ivy! — take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point, — what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented?

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
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits, — so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth —
'T is then we get the right good from a book.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning