Elizabeth Barrett Browning famous quotes

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Valentines Day #Soul

Light tomorrow with today!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Change #Inspiring #Time

He who breathes deepest lives most.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Life #Breathe

The essence of all beauty, I call love.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Essence

His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Animal #Tears #Ears

You're something between a dream and a miracle.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Life #Dream #Miracle

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Simple #Comfort #Earth

What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Dream #Wine

An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Ignorance #Mean #Greatness

I f thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way Of speaking gently ... for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and, certes, brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee-and love so wrought, May be unwrought so.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Fall #Looks

A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Greatness #Men #Chips

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Sight #Grace

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Best Friend #Funny Friendship #Book

What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Pay #Monsters #Deeds

And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Thee #After Death

Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Breathe #Drink #Feels

O rose, who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet, But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat, Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Sweet #Flower #Years

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Work #Done #Labor

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Death #Knowledge #Suffering

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Life #Love Life #True Life

Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Mom #Baby #Children

Two human loves make one divine.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Anniversary #Two #Divine

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Sweet Love #Philosophy #Educational

My sun sets to raise again.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Sun #Raises #Sun Set

Who so loves believes the impossible.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Faith #Believe

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Inspirational #Motivational #Christmas

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Romantic #Ideas

And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Hero #Men #Light

If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Faith #Desire #Have Faith

Guess now who holds thee?'--'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, . . . 'Not Death, but Love.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Death #Answers

Yet how proud we are, In daring to look down upon ourselves!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Looks #Proud #Daring

The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Flower #Dew #May

May the good God pardon all good men.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Men #Good Man #May

Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Women #Way #Praying

The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Beauty #Love Is #Essence

The man, most man, works best for men: and, if most man indeed, he gets his manhood plainest from his soul.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Men #Soul #He Man

Silence is the best response to a fool...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Silence #Fool #Response

So mothers have God's license to be missed.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Mother #Motherhood

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past — Oh, never call it loving!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Dream #Angel #Past

I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Gratitude #Cheer #Children

The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Gratitude

Whatever's lost, it first was won.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Firsts #Lost

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Greatness #Thinking #Restlessness

The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Kindness #Desire #Would Be

Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Believe #Giving #Serious

My love for him was so exquisitely pure that if we all were capable of giving and receiving such a beautiful gift the world would be a far more brilliant place; I think we'd all be poets.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Love #Beautiful #Dream

Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Utterance #Study #Evidence

Eve is a twofold mystery.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Women #Mystery

We have hearts within, Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Heart

Eyes of gentianellas azure, Staring, winking at the skies.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Eye #Sky #Azure

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Lightning #Awful

Of writing many books there is no end.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Book #Writing #Ends

If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Past #Feet #History

A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Strong #Children #Kissing

What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Life #Men

Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Book #Men #Speak

We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Imagination #Rakes #Earth

Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Women #Men #Brain

The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, Whose deeds, both great and small Are close-knot strands of an unbroken thread There love ennobles all. The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells The book of life the shining record tells. Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life-workings. A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt serve thyself by every sense, Of service which thou renderest.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Life #Strong #Children

The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Courage #Knights #Bravery

The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Baby #Sweet #Stars

Never say No when the world says Aye.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#World #Conformity

The English have a scornful insular way Of calling the French light.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Light #Calling #Way

Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Past #Age #Ill

I should not dare to call my soul my own.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Freedom #Soul #Should

I, who thought to sink, was caught up into love, and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Taught #Caught #Rhythm

The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Heart #Ambition #Care

Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Criticism #Together #Foolishness

much of the possibility of being cheerful comes from the faculty of throwing oneself beyond oneself ...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Cheerful #Possibility #Faculty

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Tyrants #Use #Injustice

You believe In God, for your part?--that He who makes Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Believe #Men #Wish

Souls are dangerous things to carry straight through all the spilt saltpetre of this world.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Soul #World #This World

Earth may embitter, not remove, The love divinely given; And e'en that mortal grief shall prove The immortality of love, And lead us nearer heaven.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Grief #Heaven #Sorrow

When God helps all the workers for His world, The singers shall have help of Him, not last.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#World #Singers #Lasts

Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high. Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low. The universe's inward voices cry "Amen" to either song of joy and woe. Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Song #Voice #Joy

It is difficult to get rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure ...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#People #Too Much #Hospitality

And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Money #Thinking #Being Free

The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Soul #Thrones #Golden

Art is much, but love is more ...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Art #Love Is #Art Is

... books are men of higher stature ...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Book #Men #Higher

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Writing

I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Art #Mean #Secret

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Thinking #Weakness

truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Truth #Pain #Soul

Souls are gregarious in a sense, but no soul touches another, as a general rule.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Soul #Gregarious

We can't separate our humanity from our poetry ...
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Poetry #Humanity

How joyously the young sea-mew Lay dreaming on the waters blue, Whereon our little bark had thrown A little shade, the only one; But shadows ever man pursue.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Dream #Men #Blue

Many a crown Covers bald foreheads.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Crowns #Royalty #Foreheads

Through heaven and earth God's will moves freely, and I follow it, As color follows light. He overflows The firmamental walls with deity, Therefore with love; His lightnings go abroad, His pity may do so, His angels must, Whene'er He gives them charges.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Wall #Moving #Angel

The plague of gold strikes far and near.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Gold #Strikes #Plague

O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Sweet #Art #Future

Where Christ brings His cross He brings His presence; and where He is none are desolate, and there is no room for despair.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Despair #Rooms #Christ

As the moths around a taper, As the bees around a rose, As the gnats around a vapour, So the spirits group and close Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Drinking #Gnats #Rose

Nosegays! leave them for the waking, Throw them earthward where they grew Dim are such, beside the breaking Amaranths he looks unto. Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Eye #Color #Looks

A great acacia, with its slender trunk And overpoise of multitudinous leaves. (In which a hundred fields might spill their dew And intense verdure, yet find room enough) Stood reconciling all the place with green.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Fields #Dew #Green

True knowledge comes only through suffering.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Adversity #Suffering #True Knowledge

Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Squares #Cities #Pleasure

Mountain gorses, do ye teach us . . . . That the wisest word man reaches Is the humblest he can speak?
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Men #Mountain #Speak

God keeps a niche In Heaven, to hold our idols; and albeit He brake them to our faces, and denied That our close kisses should impair their white,-- I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust swept from their beauty, glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Kissing #Light #Dust

For me, my heart, that erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, That sees through tears the mummers leap, Would now its wearied vision close, Would childlike on His love repose, Who giveth His Beloved, sleep.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Children #Tired #Heart