Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotations | Page 2

Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.

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 lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

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.

My sun sets to raise again.

Since when was genius found respectable?

My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.

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!

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

Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.

I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.

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

I would not be a rose upon the wall A queen might stop at, near the palace-door, To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me, It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh! I'd rather far be trodden by his foot, Than lie in a great queen's bosom.

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.

Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song into our deep, dear silence.

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.

I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love, thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

Books succeed; and lives fail.

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.

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

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

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

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell by reiteration chiefly.

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

For none can express thee, though all should approve thee. I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.

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

Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll- Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

I worked with patience which means almost power.

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

In your patience ye are strong.

Our Euripides the human, With his droppings of warm tears, and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.

He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, held out in the smoke, like stars by day.

Men of science, osteologists And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect For nature,-count nought common or unclean, Spend raptures upon perfect specimens Of indurated veins, distorted joints, Or beautiful new cases of curved spine; While we, we are shocked at nature's falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains.

So mothers have God's license to be missed.

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.

Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Large, musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry.

A woman's pity sometimes makes her mad.

Through heaven and earth God's will moves freely, and I follow it, As color follows light. He overflows The firmamental walls with deity, Therefore with love; His lightnings go abroad, His pity may do so, His angels must, Whene'er He gives them charges.

For me, my heart, that erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, That sees through tears the mummers leap, Would now its wearied vision close, Would childlike on His love repose, Who giveth His Beloved, sleep.

Many a crown Covers bald foreheads.

How joyously the young sea-mew Lay dreaming on the waters blue, Whereon our little bark had thrown A little shade, the only one; But shadows ever man pursue.

Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high. Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low. The universe's inward voices cry "Amen" to either song of joy and woe. Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!

When God helps all the workers for His world, The singers shall have help of Him, not last.

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.

When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.

O Earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the wader's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, And "giveth His beloved, sleep.

I work with patience, which is almost power.

There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand.

The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!

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.

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

O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange!

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

Mountain gorses, do ye teach us . . . . That the wisest word man reaches Is the humblest he can speak?

God keeps a niche In Heaven, to hold our idols; and albeit He brake them to our faces, and denied That our close kisses should impair their white,-- I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust swept from their beauty, glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

Tis aye a solemn thing to me To look upon a babe that sleeps-- Wearing in its spirit-deeps The unrevealed mystery Of its Adam's taint and woe, Which, when they revealed lie, Will not let it slumber so.

Nor myrtle--which means chiefly love: and love Is something awful which one dare not touch So early o' mornings.

Souls are dangerous things to carry straight through all the spilt saltpetre of this world.

You believe In God, for your part?--that He who makes Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest.

O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road Singing beside the hedge.

Art is much, but love is more ...

The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

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

Yet how proud we are, In daring to look down upon ourselves!

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental.

I cannot speak in happy tones.

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!

Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!

... books are men of higher stature ...

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice.

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

Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together!

The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.

It is difficult to get rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure ...

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

We can't separate our humanity from our poetry ...

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

truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.

It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused the trouble in the garden of Eden.

Silence is the best response to a fool...

Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!

Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it's little.

Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!

The man, most man, Works best for men, and, if most men indeed, He gets his manhood plainest from his soul: While, obviously, this stringent soul itself Obeys our old rules of development; The Spirit ever witnessing in ours, And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul, Evolving it sublimely.

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!

Eve is a twofold mystery.

Too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.

The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love.

We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits--so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth-- 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise, I barter for curl upon that mart.

If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.