Robert Browning quotes:

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  • I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

  • Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

  • But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

  • Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.

  • Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.

  • Love is energy of life.

  • The moment eternal - just that and no more - When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!

  • What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.

  • Oh, to be in England now that April's there.

  • That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!

  • The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.

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

  • 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.

  • How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

  • White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.

  • 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.

  • If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

  • Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.

  • God is the perfect poet.

  • Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

  • Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

  • God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that.

  • Ambition is not what man does... but what man would do.

  • On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

  • Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!

  • What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.

  • I.. know what I do, and am unmoved by men's blame, or their praise either.

  • So, fall asleep love, loved by me... for I know love, I am loved by thee.

  • 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."

  • Out of your whole life give but a moment!All of your life that has gone before,All to come after it, -so you ignore,So you make perfect the present, condense,In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,Thought and feeling and soul and sense."

  • A pretty woman's worth some pains to see.

  • One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.

  • But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

  • And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flowers' boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June!

  • Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

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

  • Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

  • So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!

  • Silence 'tis awe decrees.

  • Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

  • Pippa's Song The year's at the spring The day's at the morn Morning's at seven, The Hill side's dew-pearled The lark's on the wing The snail's on the thorn God's in his heaven- All's right with the world

  • There's a new tribunal now higher than God's -The educated man's!

  • Mid the sharp, short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip at the end of its tube, blows out its great red bell, Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

  • Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware.

  • Success in marriage is more than finding the right person: it is being the right person.

  • Hand Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, And great hearts expand And grow one in the sense of this world's life.

  • Aspire, break bounds. Endeavor to be good, and better still, best.

  • Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

  • Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

  • Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

  • Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

  • Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

  • Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed It's petals up ...

  • Youth means love, Vows can't change nature, priests are only men.

  • Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

  • Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

  • It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad.

  • There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Into the street the piper stepped, Smiling first a little smile As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while. And the piper advanced And the children followed.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • God smiles as He has always smiled; Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled The Heavens, God thought on me His child; Ordained a life for me, arrayed Its circumstances, every one To the minutest; ay, God said This head this hand should rest upon Thus, ere He fashioned star or sun.

  • All service ranks the same with God,- With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.

  • Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

  • Every one soon or late comes round by Rome.

  • A lion may die of an ass's kick.

  • how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet

  • 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.

  • Love is the energy of life.

  • Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

  • Who hears music, feels his solitudePeopled at once.

  • I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive,- what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time.

  • Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

  • My sun sets to rise again.

  • Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

  • Have you found your life distasteful? My life did, and does, smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I'll complain. Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

  • What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

  • God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.

  • All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black.

  • I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two.

  • To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning to your life.

  • Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

  • 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.

  • All June I bound the rose in sheaves, Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves.

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

  • A minute's success pays the failure of years.

  • It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

  • Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

  • Faultless to a fault.

  • No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.

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

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

  • A man in armor is his armor's slave.

  • A man in armour is his armour's slave.

  • A minute of success pays for years of failure.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: See all, nor be afraid!

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

  • Ah, love, - you are my unutterable blessing.....I am in full sunshine now.

  • All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!

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

  • All poetry is putting the infinite within the finite.

  • All service is the same with God.

  • All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee; All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem; In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea; Breath and bloom, shade and shine,- wonder, wealth, and-how far above them- Truth, that's brighter than gem, Truth, that's purer than pearl,- Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe- all were for me In the kiss of one girl.

  • All's love, yet all's law.

  • And gain is gain, however small.

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

  • And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,- comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.

  • Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.

  • Are there not, dear Michael, Two points in the adventure of the diver,- One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge; One, when a prince he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge.

  • Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

  • As if true pride Were not also humble!

  • As is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: You will find what you desire.

  • At last awake from life, that insane dream we take for waking now.

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

  • Be sure they sleep not whom God needs.

  • Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop.

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