Best 240 quotes of Elizabeth Barrett Browning on MyQuotes

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.

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.

A grave, on which to rest from singing?

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

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

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.

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.

And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine.

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

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.

And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.

And I must bear What is ordained with patience, being aware Necessity doth front the universe With an invincible gesture.

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

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.

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

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

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

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!

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

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 yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain

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

Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

Art is much, but love is more.

As the moths around a taper, As the bees around a rose, As the gnats around a vapour, So the spirits group and close Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

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!

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

A woman's pity sometimes makes her mad.

Behold me! I am worthy Of thy loving, for I love thee!

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

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

Books are men of higher stature.

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!

Books succeed; and lives fail.

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

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

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

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

Capacity for joy Admits temptation.

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

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

Deep violets, you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you, Without a thought disloyal.

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

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

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?

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

Earth's crammed with Heaven.

Earth may embitter, not remove, The love divinely given; And e'en that mortal grief shall prove The immortality of love, And lead us nearer heaven.

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.