Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.

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

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee — in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

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

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

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

I seek no copy now of life's first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future's epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

It is the nature of the human mind to convey its own character to whatever substance it conveys, whether it convey metaphysical impressions from itself to another mind, or literary compositions from one to another language.

Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any more farewells, which are upon human lips, of all words, the most natural, and of all the most painful.

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.

Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.

The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete, — -
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.

The world of books is still the world.

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.