Robert Browning Quotes - Page 13

The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.

Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

He guides me and the bird. In His good time!

Death was past, life not come: so he waited.

That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.

The ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.

I have no little insight into the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits obliged to face each other for ever--prints put together in portfolios.

Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed As, God be thanked! I do not.

God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

I know a mount, the gracious Sun perceives First when he visits, last, too, when he leaves The world; and, vainly favored, it repays The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze By no change of its large calm front of snow.

Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this ye call A "great event" should come to pass From that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!

"With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart" once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all.

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower.

Ever judge of men by their professions. For though the bright moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it, and know the man by it, I say,- not by his performance; which is half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's own. I judge people by what they might be,- not are, nor will be.

Genius has somewhat of the infantine; but of the childish not a touch or taint.

'Tis well averred, A scientific faith's absurd.

The body sprang At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,-no!

A pretty woman's worth some pains to see, Nor is she spoiled, I take it, if a crown Completes the forehead pale and tresses pure.