Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

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

Some people always sigh in thanking God.

Books are men of higher stature.

The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.

May the good God pardon all good men.

This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.

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

I, who thought to sink, was caught up into love, and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm.

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

The man, most man, works best for men: and, if most man indeed, he gets his manhood plainest from his soul.

The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

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

God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song.

And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?

So mothers have God's license to be missed.

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.

Souls are gregarious in a sense, but no soul touches another, as a general rule.

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.'

My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God.

My sun sets to raise again.

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

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

A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.

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.

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.

For frequent tears have run; The colours from my life.

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

Of writing many books there is no end.

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

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.

Don't get me wrong-painting's all right. But now that we have photography, what's the point?

Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

True knowledge comes only through suffering.

He who breathes deepest lives most.

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.

And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air, Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair; And they heard the words it said,- "Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!"

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

And lips say “God be pitiful,” Who ne'er said “God be praised.”

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

Where Christ brings His cross He brings His presence; and where He is none are desolate, and there is no room for despair.

The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

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

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.