All Quotes by Robert Browning
“There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;....and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”
“I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.”
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?”
“My sun sets to rise again.”
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.”
“If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.”
“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,”
“If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.”
“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”
“The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!”
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.”
“If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.”
“Rats! In fifty different sharps and flats.”
“Kiss me as if you made believe It's petals up.”
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”
“The lie was deadAnd damned, and truth stood up instead.”
“Over my head his arm he flungAgainst the world.”
“There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest.”
“I trust in Nature for the stable lawsAnd God's.”
“I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.”
“I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.”
“Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.”
“It is so horrible,Some future state revealed to us by Zeus”
“Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?”
“We loved, sir — used to meet: But then, how it was sweet!”
“Who hears music feels his solitude Peopled at once.”
“Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there.”
“Have you found your life distasteful? My sun sets to rise again.”
“I find earth not gray but rosy; Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.”
“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”
“Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!”
“What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.”
“A minute's success pays the failure of years.”
“All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —”
“The moment eternal — just that and no more — While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!”
“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Sleep to wake.”
“Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.”
“Strive and thrive!”
“Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.”
“That we devote ourselves to God, is seenIn living just as though no God there were.”
“Be sure that GodNe'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.”
“Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.”
“I see my way as birds their trackless way.He guides me and the bird. In his good time.”
“Truth is within ourselves.”
“God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations.”
“Strange secrets are let out by Death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.”
“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”
“The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clungTo their first fault, and withered in their pride.”
“Every joy is gainAnd gain is gain, however small.”
“Jove strikes the Titans downBut when another rock would crown the work.”
“The peerless cup afloatSwims bearing high above her head.”
“I give the fight up: let there be an end,I want to be forgotten even by God.”
“Progress isThe law of life: man is not Man as yet.”
“Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?Power shall fall short in or exceed!”
“The year's at the spring, All's right with the world!”
“Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,—Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.”
“In the morning of the world,When earth was nigher heaven than now.”
“All service ranks the same with God,—Are we: there is no last nor first.”
“When is man strong until he feels alone?”
“The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth.”
“What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:”
“Oh, to be in England Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf.”
“That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, The first fine careless rapture!”
“God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear,To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.”
“How good is man's life, the mere living! Forever in joy!”
“'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!”
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?”
“Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!”
“If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents.”
“You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls.”
“I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.”
“What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?”
“Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”
“Italy, my Italy!Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'"”
“What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.”
“What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew”
“When the fight begins within himself,A man's worth something.”
“Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The superstitious atheist.”
“Lofty designs must close in like effects.”
“Rafael made a century of sonnets.”
“Other heights in other lives, God willing.”
“God be thanked, the meanest of his creaturesOne to show a woman when he loves her!”
“Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!”
“Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.”
“For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.”
“The body sprangAt once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!”
“What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.”
“For I say this is death and the sole death,—And lack of love from love made manifest.”
“Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.”
“The ultimate, angels' law,There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!”
“Grow old along with me! Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"”
“Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"”
“All instincts immature, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.”
“Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup.”
“Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? Thee, God, who mouldest men.”
“Love is energy of life.”
“So, take, and use thy work: Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!”
“The rain set early in tonight,”
“Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore: A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.”
“A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact I'the touch and sight.”
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.”
“A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?”
“Go practise if you please For Christ's particular love's sake!”
“In the great right of an excessive wrong.”
“Was never evening yetBut seemed far beautifuller than its day.”
“Oh child that didst despise thy life so much "Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"”
“The curious crime, the fineFelicity and flower of wickedness.”
“Why comes temptation, but for man to meetAnd so be pedestaled in triumph?”
“White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Life’s business being just the terrible choice.”
“Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!”
“It is the glory and good of ArtOf speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.”
“Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)Linking our England to his Italy.”
“The sprinkled isles,Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.”
“And I have written three books on the soul,And putting us to ignorance again.”
“Just my vengeance complete,So, I was afraid!”
“Oh never starWas lost here but it rose afar.”
“When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?”
“The sin I impute to each frustrute ghostThough the end in sight was a vice, I say.”
“Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.”
“Just for a handful of silver he left us,Just for a riband to stick in his coat.”
“We shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence;Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.”
“They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change:We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store.”
“What's come to perfection perishes.Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.”
“O woman-country! wooed not wed,Laid to their hearts instead.”
“That great browAnd the spirit-small hand propping it.”
“If two lives join, there is oft a scar.One near one is too far.”
“Only I discernOf finite hearts that yearn.”
“Round and round, like a dance of snowSculptured in stone on the poet's pages.”
“How he lies in his rights of a man!Surprise of the change.”
“Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,How strange it seems, and new!”
“He who did well in war just earns the rightTo begin doing well in peace.”
“And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,While Northern thought is slow and durable.”
“A people is but the attempt of manyAre singly of more value than they all.”
“Was there nought better than to enjoy?No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?”
“Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?”
“There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.”
“Then welcome each rebuffLearn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
“White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.”
“What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me.”
“How sad and bad and mad it was!But then, how it was sweet!”
“So may a glory from defect arise.”
“Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.”
“This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever.”
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,”
“It's wiser being good than bad;Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”
“But how carve way i' the life that lies before,If bent on groaning ever for the past?”
“Better have failed in the high aim, as I,As, God be thanked! I do not.”
“"With this same keyDid Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!”
“God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,Rests never on the track until it reach”
“Good, to forgive;Dying, we live.”
“Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?”
“Sky—what a scowl of cloudSplendid, a star!”
“Wanting is—what?Where is the blot?”
“But little do or can the best of us:That little is achieved through Liberty.”
“There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music.”
“A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.”
“God is the perfect poet.”
“A minute's success pays the failure of years.”
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.”