Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotations

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.

Very whitely still The lilies of our lives may reassure Their blossoms from their roots, accessible Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer; Growing straight out of man's reach, on the hill. God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

Every wish Is like a prayer--with God.

O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.

There's nothing great Nor small, has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan, To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain-- For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river.

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

I wish I were the lily's leaf To fade upon that bosom warm, Content to wither, pale and brief, The trophy of thy paler form.

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

True knowledge comes only through suffering.