Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes - Page 10

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.

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.

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.

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

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

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

You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.

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.

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.

Men of science, osteologists And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect For nature,-count nought common or unclean, Spend raptures upon perfect specimens Of indurated veins, distorted joints, Or beautiful new cases of curved spine; While we, we are shocked at nature's falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains.

And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air, Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair; And they heard the words it said,- "Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!"

Tis aye a solemn thing to me To look upon a babe that sleeps-- Wearing in its spirit-deeps The unrevealed mystery Of its Adam's taint and woe, Which, when they revealed lie, Will not let it slumber so.

Nor myrtle--which means chiefly love: and love Is something awful which one dare not touch So early o' mornings.

O Earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the wader's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, And "giveth His beloved, sleep.

He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Many a crown Covers bald foreheads.

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.

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!

In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

A woman's pity sometimes makes her mad.

The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, held out in the smoke, like stars by day.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell by reiteration chiefly.

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.