Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

Many a crownCovers bald foreheads.

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.

Of writing many books there is no end.

What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

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.

What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?

I cannot speakIn happy tones; the tear drops on my cheekShow I am sad;But I can speakOf grace to suffer with submission meek,Until made glad.

For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.

Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.

Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.

Tis aye a solemn thing to meTo look upon a babe that sleeps--Wearing in its spirit-deepsThe unrevealed mysteryOf its Adam's taint and woe,Which, when they revealed lie,Will not let it slumber so.

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.

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.

Gaze up at the stars knowing that I see the same sky and wish the same sweet dreams.

Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake.

An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.

Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.

The English have a scornful insular way Of calling the French light.

You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

Light tomorrow with today!

But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it's little.

The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.

Men of science, osteologists And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect For nature,-count nought common or unclean, Spend raptures upon perfect specimens Of indurated veins, distorted joints, Or beautiful new cases of curved spine; While we, we are shocked at nature's falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains.

I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.

What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.

In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.

When we first met and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. . . .

Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

Definition of Love: A score of zero in tennis. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life.

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.

I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.

There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.

Unless you can feel when the song is doneNo other is sweet in its rhythm;Unless you can feel when left by oneThat all men else go with him.

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.

The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!

But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.

But I love you, sir:And when a woman says she loves a man,The man must hear her, though he love her not.

Art is much, but love is more.

With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!

Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it.

If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.

Eve is a twofold mystery.

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.

You smell a rose through a fence: If two should smell it, what matter?

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.

Neither love me forThine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love, thereby!But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

The essence of all beauty, I call love.

And friends, dear friends,--when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, And gone my bier ye come to weep, Let One, most loving of you all, Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall; He giveth His beloved sleep.