Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?”

“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)”

“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.”

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

“Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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