Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

And I said in underbreath —
All our life is mixed with death, —
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God's greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness, — Round our restlessness, His rest.

Here's ivy! — take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

[O]ut of books / He taught me all the ignorance of men, / And how God laughs in heaven when any man / Says 'Here I'm learned; this, I understand; / In that, I am never caught at fault or doubt.

Oh — this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, & I almost believe — but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of the window! — at least, for me.

الكتَابُ هو المعلم الذي يعلم بلا عصا ولا غضب , إن قصدته لا يختبئ منك وإن أخطأت لا يوبخك , وإذا أظهرت جهلك لا يسخر منك

Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars, — And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.

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.

What I do, and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

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

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.

She lived, we'll say,
A harmless life, she called a
virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all
(But that she had not lived enough to know)

Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was playing he thought so. In the same way he can’t bear me to look into a glass, because he thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, and he is jealous of its being so close to me. He used to tremble and bark at it, but now he is silently jealous, and contents himself with squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.

The wisest word man reaches is the humblest he can speak.