Robert Browning Quotes

306 Sourced Quotes

He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.

Robert Browning
This could but have happened once,—
And we missed it, lost it forever.

Robert Browning
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city.

Robert Browning
How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!

Robert Browning
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.

Robert Browning
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it.
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,—
His hundred's soon hit;
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.

Robert Browning
A man can have but one life and one death,
One heaven, one hell.

Robert Browning
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.

Robert Browning
I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

Robert Browning
Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.

Robert Browning
'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

Robert Browning
So men believe
And worship what they know not, nor receive
Delight from.

Robert Browning
Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work.

Robert Browning
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are;
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

Robert Browning
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.

Robert Browning
But, gathering in its ancient market-place,
Talked group with restless group ; and not a face
But wrath made livid, for among them were
Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care
To feast him. Fear had long since taken root
In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way
It worked while each grew drunk! men grave and grey
Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro.
Letting the silent luxury trickle slow
About the hollows where a heart should be;
But the young gulped with a delirious glee
Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood
At the fierce news

Robert Browning
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her- Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her

Robert Browning
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

Robert Browning
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

Robert Browning
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.

Robert Browning
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!

Robert Browning
The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.

Robert Browning
All poetry is difficult to read,
— The sense of it is, anyhow.

Robert Browning
She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Robert Browning
It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.

Robert Browning
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also.

Robert Browning
Over zealous in the feat
And stumbling on a peril unaware.
Was captive, "trammelled in his proper snare,"
They phrase it, "taken by his own intrigue"

Robert Browning
Of power does Man possess no particle:
Of knowledge-just so much as show that still
It ends in ignorance on every side...

Robert Browning
While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord.

Robert Browning
He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.'

Robert Browning