Robert Browning Quotes

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives, — Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, — Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

Less is more.

smoke comes first:
Once let smoke rise untroubled, we descry
Clearlier what tongues of flame may spire and spit
To eye and ear, each with appropriate tinge
According to its food, or pure or foul.

"Last night I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, 'Some love, some faith you keep?'
You answered, 'Faith gone, love estranged.'
Whereat I woke — - a twofold bliss:
Waking was one, but next there came
This other:"Though I felt, for this,
My heart break, I loved on the same.

The adulteress lies imprisoned, — whether in a well
With bricks above and a snake for company,
Or tied by a garter to a bed-post

"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."

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

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage-

Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death,
...
The grand Perhaps!

The world and life's too big to pass for a dream

With mortals much must go, but something stays;
Nothing will stay of our so happy selves.

T is just a flower's fate: past parterre we trip,
Till peradventure someone plucks our sleeve

There was a fancy came,
When somewhere, in the journey with my friend,
We stepped into a hovel to get food;
And there began a yelp here, a bark there, — Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth
And vexed themselves and us till we retired.
The hovel is life: no matter what dogs bit
Or cats scratched in the hovel I break from,
All outside is lone field, moon and such peace — Flowing in, filling up as with a sea
Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the white,
Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares,
To meet me and calm all things back again.

Well, are we demigods or merely clay?
Is success still attendant on desert?
Is this, we live on, heaven and the final state,
Or earth which means probation to the end?
Why claim escape from man's predestined lot
Of being beaten and baffled? — God's decree,
In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce.

"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.