Robert Browning Quotes

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearl'd; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!

for the natural man is roused
At fools who first do wrong then pour the blame
Of their wrong-doing, Satan-like, on Job.

I know what I want and what I might gain, and yet, how profitless to know.

O lyric love! half angel half bird

To only have conceived,
Planned your great works, apart from progress,
Surpasses little works achieved!

So, take, and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be!

"My friend is not "mistrustful" of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks & umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for "Colburn's" on her sayings & doings up-stairs — but, spite of that, she does mistrust . . . so mistrust my common sense; nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on asserting it! — all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label on, with name, genus & species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I wo'n't, because the first visit of the North wind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea — and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether."

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

My sun sets to rise again.

This it is to have to do
With honest hearts: they easily may err,
But in the main they wish well to the truth.

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!

How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.

When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?