Robert Browning Life Quotations

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

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

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together.

How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!

Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-tetootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life

That he was dead and then restored to life / By a Nazarene physician of his tribe.

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.

I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds All the world's loves in its unworldliness.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold.

Have you found your life distasteful? My life did, and does, smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I'll complain. Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

The world and life's too big to pass for a dream

At last awake from life, that insane dream we take for waking now.

How good is life, the mere living!

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black.

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.

Death was past, life not come: so he waited.

That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.

The ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet.

Life is an empty dream.

Other heights in other lives, God willing.

If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.

To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning to your life.

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.