Robert Browning Quotes

306 Sourced Quotes

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
Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!

Robert Browning
Each life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.

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

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

Robert Browning
The swallow has set her six young on the rail,
And looks sea-ward.

Robert Browning
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing.

Robert Browning
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency.

Robert Browning
Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

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

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
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also.

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

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

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

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
But little do or can the best of us:
That little is achieved through Liberty.

Robert Browning
All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black.

Robert Browning
Where the apple reddens never pry - lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.

Robert Browning