Top 262 Quotes & Sayings by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Page 3

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

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

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.

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.

Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.

When we first met and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. . . .

Love that endures, from life that disappears!

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

Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?

Unless you can feel when the song is done No other is sweet in its rhythm; Unless you can feel when left by one That all men else go with him.

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

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

I cannot speak In happy tones; the tear drops on my cheek Show I am sad; But I can speak Of grace to suffer with submission meek, Until made glad.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach

Large, musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Eve is a twofold mystery.

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.

The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.

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.

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.

Get leave to work In this world,--'tis the best you get at all.

XI I sang his name instead of song; Over and over I sang his name: Backward and forward I sang it along, With my sweetest notes, it was still the same! I sang it low, that the slave-girls near Might never guess, from what they could hear, That all the song was a name.

Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.

The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.

They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God. And why? And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold, Though from Him all that's glory shines. God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face - Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place: As if my tender brother laid On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half waking me at night; and said, "Who kissed through the dark, dear guesser?"

Get work, get work; Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get.

So mothers have God's license to be missed.

You smell a rose through a fence: If two should smell it, what matter?

Every wish Is like a prayer--with God.

She has seen the mystery hid Under Egypt's pyramid: By those eyelids pale and close Now she knows what Rhamses knows.

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!"

For frequent tears have run; The colours from my life.

The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

Some people always sigh in thanking God.

Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.

We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake.

But so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware.

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

The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.

The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.

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

We have hearts within, Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts.

Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, Tired of all the playing, Sleep with smile the sweeter for That you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand Golden lights serenely-- One cheek, pushed out by the hand, Folds the dimple inly.

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

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

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

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.

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

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

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