Robert Browning Quotes

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

Oh, to be in England now that April's there.

Oh the wild joys of living! The leaping from rock to rock ... the cool silver shock of the plunge in a pool's living waters.

Are there not, dear Michael, Two points in the adventure of the diver,- One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge; One, when a prince he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge.

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

The trouble that most of us find with the modern matched sets of clubs is that they don't really seem to know any more about the game than the old ones did.

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

Twere too absurd to slight For the hereafter the todays delight!

Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays!

And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,- comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

Truth is truth howe'er it strike.

God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that.

What a thing friendship is - World without end.

The moment eternal - just that and no more - When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!

But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

No work begun shall ever pause for death.

Man seeks his own good at the whole world's cost.

Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies.

What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.

The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.

Desire joy and thank God for it. Renounce it, if need be, for other's sake. That's joy beyond joy.

Truth is within ourselves. There is an inmost center in us all, where the truth abides in fullness.

God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

God is in his Heaven, all's right with the world.

There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life.

Therefore I summon age / To grant youth's heritage.

You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt.

Love is the energy of life.

Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side.

Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais): "Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it 'Italy.'"

In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity; On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity

I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever.

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee; All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem; In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea; Breath and bloom, shade and shine,- wonder, wealth, and-how far above them- Truth, that's brighter than gem, Truth, that's purer than pearl,- Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe- all were for me In the kiss of one girl.

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.

Ah, love, - you are my unutterable blessing.....I am in full sunshine now.

Faultless to a fault.

Mothers, wives and maids, These be the tools with which priests manage men.

Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

Is your love for the Lord sufficient to give all your time and talents to his work?

There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and on the other hand, those who tolerate everything, because they believe nothing.

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's Is ? not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be ? but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means.

They are perfect; how else?-they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?-we have time in store.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so; life's business being just the terrible choice.

Poetry, like love, is something we never truly say goodbye to.

I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.

To me at least was never evening yet, but seemed far beautifuller than its day.