Robert Browning Quotes

Why stay we on earth except to grow?

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

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart— When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory — to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus

When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.

Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn.

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

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,—one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!

Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais):
"Open my heart, and you will see
Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'"

How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses Forever in joy!

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made ...

Just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.

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