Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you
Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.
A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.
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.
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.
With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.
Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song into our deep, dear silence.
She has seen the mystery hid Under Egypt's pyramid: By those eyelids pale and close Now she knows what Rhamses knows.
The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.
He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.
There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
Nosegays! leave them for the waking, Throw them earthward where they grew Dim are such, beside the breaking Amaranths he looks unto. Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused the trouble in the garden of Eden.
O rose, who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet, But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat, Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.
What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?
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.
As the moths around a taper, As the bees around a rose, As the gnats around a vapour, So the spirits group and close Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
There's nothing great Nor small, has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
