Robert Browning Quotes

306 Sourced Quotes

You should not take a fellow eight years old
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.

Robert Browning
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.

Robert Browning
In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

Robert Browning
Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

Robert Browning
Truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done.

Robert Browning
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!

Robert Browning
…I feel for the common chord again…
The C Major of this life.

Robert Browning
They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change:
We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store.

Robert Browning
'Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ: Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

Robert Browning
O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

Robert Browning
Day! Faster and more fast. O'er night's brim, day boils at last.

Robert Browning
That's all we may expect of man, this side The grave: his good is—knowing he is bad.

Robert Browning
Sky—what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!

Robert Browning
I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.

Robert Browning
All service ranks the same with God,—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

Robert Browning
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.

Robert Browning
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Robert Browning
He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him, as one who awakes:
The past was a sleep, and her life began.

Robert Browning
We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last Comes God behind them.

Robert Browning
A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.

Robert Browning
When it was written, God and Robert Browning knew what it meant; now only God knows.
On Sordello

Robert Browning
God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!

Robert Browning
Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"

Robert Browning
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.

Robert Browning
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee; All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem; In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea; Breath and bloom, shade and shine,- wonder, wealth, and-how far above them- Truth, that's brighter than gem, Truth, that's purer than pearl,- Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe- all were for me In the kiss of one girl.

Robert Browning
The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.

Robert Browning
The best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy.

Robert Browning
Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy

Robert Browning
The only fault's with time; All men become good creatures: but so slow!

Robert Browning
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

Robert Browning