Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

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.

And here fantastic fishes duskly float,
Using the calm for waters, while their fires
Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them — The summer flowers depart — Sit still — as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, — Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them — The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe — come winter's cold — Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne'er be desolate.

With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! - and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies...
Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine...
What hast though to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer...

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.

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

Kulağına çalınan sevdiğin bir ses,
Sustuysa, tatlılığını yitirdiyse aniden,
Çığlıkla yırtmaya cesaret edemediğin bir sessizlik,
Kuvvetli, taze bir hastalık gibi acıtıyorsa seni,
Ne ümidi? Ne yardımı? Nasıl bir müzik silebilir,
Bu sessizliği kulaklarından?

"An honest man's the noblest work of God." Alexander Pope

Psalm 23:4
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861"

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book
And calculating profits - so much help
By so much rending. 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.

Flush likes civilised life, and the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with fleas, which afflict poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert and me down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side! He suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it. He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a remedy?

I took Wilson with me. I had courage to keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you in strict confidence that it was known to them potentially, that is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they should be able to say at last, ‘We were not instructed in this and this.’ The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness, would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made even in the hour I left them. I knew that by the anguish I suffered in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone — I shrank from it. And also, it was the sacrifice of two. And he, as you say, had done everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently — in spite of my own will — drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both. My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till you can know him.

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.

A mirror may be held in different lights by different hands; and, according to the position of those hands, will the light fall.

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified, — Take it thou, — finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.