Robert Browning Quotes

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!

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

Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.

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

"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."

God made all the creatures and them our love and out fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.

If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.

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.

time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,

I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp

Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
Where is the blot?

That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.

And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,
Seem nigh on bursting, — if you nearly see
The real world through the false, — what do you see?
Is the old so ruined? You find you ’re in a flock
O’ the youthful, earnest, passionate — genius, beauty,
Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:
And all depose their natural rights, hail you,
(That ’s me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,
Participate in Sludgehood

Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.