Robert Browning Quotes

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character

How sad and bad and mad it was!
But then, how it was sweet!

Life In Love

Escape me?
Never — -
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
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, — -
So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me — -
Ever
Removed!

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

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

Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.

"So much of paradisal nature, Eve's!
Her daughters ever since prefer to urge
"Adam so starved me I was fain accept
The apple any serpent pushed my way.

All June, I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves,
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.

How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string — fold music's wing.
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

My whole life long I learned to love. This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion. — Heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! Lose who may — I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they.

The best is yet to be.

Read the text right and emancipate the world. – Robert Browning

I saw no use in the past: only a scene
Of degradation, ugliness, and tears;
The record of disgraces best forgotten;

we’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted – better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.

The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost
Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

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

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.