Robert Browning Quotes - Page 12

For thence a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, - Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

When a man's busy, why leisure Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: 'Faith, and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away.

The great beacon light God sets in all, the conscience of each bosom.

No work begun shall ever pause for death.

A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.

That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it.

All poetry is difficult to read - The sense of it anyhow.

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception-which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was of us, Burns, Shelley, were with us. They watch from their graves!

And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.

How very hard it is to be a Christian!

I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,-the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures. I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward,-Nature's good And God's.

For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished that the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, But the main thing is, does it hold good measure Heaven soon sets right all other matters!

Dear, dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms?

Day! Faster and more fast. O'er night's brim, day boils at last.

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

Hatred and cark and care, what place have they / In yon blue liberality of heaven?.

Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!

We shall march prospering,-not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,-not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,-while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.

When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?

Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies.