Robert Browning Quotes

The best is yet to be.

The power of the night, the press of the storm, the post of the foe; where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, yet, the strong man must go.

"We are the sum of all people we have ever met; you change the tribe and the tribe changes you." - Fierce People

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until… in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
- Aeschylus

"A man like to me, Thou shalt love be loved by forever. A hand like this hand shall throw open the gates of new life to thee!" Robert Browning

"Courage is grace under pressure." Ernest Hemingway

"For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

"Behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." James Russel Lowell

"My God, my Father, and my friend. Do not forsake me in the end." Wentworth Dillon"

Robert Browning's childhood was passed in an unusually serene and happy home. In Development he tells how, at five years of age, he was made to understand the main facts of the Trojan War by his father's clever use of the cat, the dogs, the pony in the stable, and the page-boy, to impersonate the heroes of that ancient conflict.

So, I soberly laid my last plan
To extinguish the man.
Round his creep-hole, with never a break
Ran my fires for his sake;
Over-head, did my thunder combine
With my under-ground mine:
Till I looked from my labour content
To enjoy the event.

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

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
‘Tis something, nay ‘tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what’s best for men?
Are you — -poor, sick, old ere your time — -
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding’s a joy! For me, I ride.

Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.

Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of “The Judgement of Paris”

He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.

Our business was done at the river's brink;

There is to truer truth attainable to man than comes of music.

A man in armor is his armor's slave.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.

Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear: We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: See a great Tree of Life that never sere Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak; Such ending is not death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart, — to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is muck from springs of turbid source. — G EORGE M EREDITH.