Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself, — cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally, And build up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God.

Since when was genius found respectable?

Nay, if there's room for poets in the world
A little overgrown, (I think there is)
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne's, — this live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,
Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles.

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.

Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.

That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life;
While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me.

Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't.

If I married him,
I would not dare to call my soul my own,
Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought
And every heart-beat down there in the bill,–
Not one found honestly deductible
From any use that pleased him!

Every wish
Is like a prayer—with God.

The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.

Dreams of doing good
For good-for-nothing people.

Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–'
'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief)
'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone,
And none was left to love in all the world.

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.

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.