Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it's little.
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain
There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand.
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road Singing beside the hedge.
I, who thought to sink, was caught up into love, and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm.
Souls are gregarious in a sense, but no soul touches another, as a general rule.
Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.
The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.
But since he had The genius to be loved, why let him have The justice to be honoured in his grave.
Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.
For none can express thee, though all should approve thee. I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
The denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown.
I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.
The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.
Mountain gorses, do ye teach us . . . . That the wisest word man reaches Is the humblest he can speak?
The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone.
The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice.
The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.
It is difficult to get rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure.
And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?
Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!
You believe In God, for your part?--that He who makes Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest.
How joyously the young sea-mew Lay dreaming on the waters blue, Whereon our little bark had thrown A little shade, the only one; But shadows ever man pursue.
And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!
Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.