Robert Browning Quotes

Well, are we demigods or merely clay?
Is success still attendant on desert?
Is this, we live on, heaven and the final state,
Or earth which means probation to the end?
Why claim escape from man's predestined lot
Of being beaten and baffled? — God's decree,
In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce.

It's wiser being good than bad;
It's safer being meek than fierce;
It's fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That after Last returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.

Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what's a heaven for

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declin'd, one more foot-path ontrod,
One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!

On a day like today I am stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.

Life with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true.

The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

But to have seen thee, and to die so soon!

Autumn wins you best by this its mute </br>Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

The body sprang
At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!