Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

But so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware.

Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, Tired of all the playing, Sleep with smile the sweeter for That you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand Golden lights serenely-- One cheek, pushed out by the hand, Folds the dimple inly.

And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.

He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

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.

A great acacia, with its slender trunkAnd overpoise of multitudinous leaves.(In which a hundred fields might spill their dewAnd intense verdure, yet find room enough)Stood reconciling all the place with green.

Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.

And there my little doves did sit With feathers softly brown And glittering eyes that showed their right To general Nature's deep delight.

I f thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way Of speaking gently ... for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and, certes, brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee-and love so wrought, May be unwrought so.

She lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?

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.

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.

She has seen the mystery hid Under Egypt's pyramid: By those eyelids pale and close Now she knows what Rhamses knows.

Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.

Knowledge by suffering entereth,And life is perfected by death.

Wall must get the weather stain Before they grow the ivy.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

My love for him was so exquisitely pure that if we all were capable of giving and receiving such a beautiful gift the world would be a far more brilliant place; I think we'd all be poets.

We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits--so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth-- 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

A woman is always younger than a man at equal years.

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.

Death forerunneth Love to win "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Much of the possibility of being cheerful comes from the faculty of throwing oneself beyond oneself.

I worked with patience which means almost power.

Books succeed; and lives fail.

Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.

Love that endures, from life that disappears!

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!

Silence is the best response to a fool.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

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.

A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking,Throw them earthward where they grewDim are such, beside the breakingAmaranths he looks unto.Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'

I would not be a rose upon the wallA queen might stop at, near the palace-door,To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me,It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh!I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,Than lie in a great queen's bosom.

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.

Children use the fist until they are of age to use the brain.

But since he had The genius to be loved, why let him have The justice to be honoured in his grave.

Guess now who holds thee?'--'Death,' I said. But,there,The silver answer rang, . . . 'Not Death, but Love.

And lilies are still lilies, pulled By smutty hands, though spotted from their white.

Get work, get work; Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get.

Books are men of higher stature.

He lives most life whoever breathes most air.

Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.

Whatever's lost, it first was won.

A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, held out in the smoke, like stars by day.

Nor myrtle--which means chiefly love: and loveIs something awful which one dare not touchSo early o' mornings.