Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes - Page 4

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me?

I should not dare to call my soul my own.

Children use the fist until they are of age to use the brain.

When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.

I would not be a rose upon the wall A queen might stop at, near the palace-door, To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me, It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh! I'd rather far be trodden by his foot, Than lie in a great queen's bosom.

The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.

World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.

O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.

Eyes of gentianellas azure, Staring, winking at the skies.

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

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.

Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.

What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

The man, most man, Works best for men, and, if most men indeed, He gets his manhood plainest from his soul: While, obviously, this stringent soul itself Obeys our old rules of development; The Spirit ever witnessing in ours, And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul, Evolving it sublimely.

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.

Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

Wall must get the weather stain Before they grow the ivy.

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!

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.

My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God.

With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!

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

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!