Robert Browning Quotes in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

Elizabeth Barrett: What's another disaster to one who has known little but disaster all her life? But you're a fighter. You were born for victory and triumph. Oh, and if disaster ever came to you through me...

Robert Browning: Yes, a fighter. But I'm sick of fighting alone. I need a comrade in arms to fight beside me.

Elizabeth Barrett: But not one already wounded in battle.

Robert Browning: Wounded but undaunted, unbeaten, unbroken. What finer comrade could a man ask for?

Elizabeth Barrett: Robert, have you ever thought that my strength may break down on the journey?

Robert Browning: It had occurred to me, yes.

Elizabeth Barrett: Supposing I were to die on your hands?

Robert Browning: Are you afraid, Ba?

Elizabeth Barrett: Afraid. You should know that I would rather die with you beside me than live a hundred lives without you. But how would you feel if I were to die? And what would the world say of you?

Robert Browning: I should be branded as a little better than a murderer. What I should feel... I leave you to imagine.

Elizabeth Barrett: And yet you ask me to come with you?

Robert Browning: Yes. I am prepared to risk your life, much more my own, to get you out of that dreadful house and into the sun and to have you for my wife.

Elizabeth Barrett: You love me like that?

Robert Browning: I love you like that.

Robert Browning: [about one of his poems] When that passage was written, only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now, only God understands it!

Robert Browning: I'm a very modest man.

[pause]

Robert Browning: I am, really.

Robert Browning: Oh, nothing they told me about you, personally, had the slightest interests for me. Because I knew it already. And better than they.

Elizabeth Barrett: Oh, Mr. Browning, do my writings give me so hopelessly away?

Robert Browning: Hopelessly, utterly, entirely - to me. Of course, I can't speak for the rest of the world.

Elizabeth Barrett: I pray it would be quite useless, by ever trying to play act with you.

Robert Browning: Quite useless.

Elizabeth Barrett: I shall always have to be - just myself?

Robert Browning: Always.

Robert Browning: I find you as I pictured you, full of courage and gaiety.

Robert Browning: Ha-ha. Dear Miss Barrett, what a splendid beginning to our friendship. We've known each other a mere half hour, and yet we've talked intimately of art and life and death and love. We've ordered each other about and we've almost quarreled. Could anything be happier and more promising?

Robert Browning: Au revoir, then.

Elizabeth Barrett: Goodbye.

Robert Browning: Au revoir.

Elizabeth Barrett: Au revoir.

Bella Hedley: Oh, Mr. Browning, I'm so frilled to see you. It is Mr. Browning, isn't it? It must be, because I've always heard him called the handsomest poet in England. Of course, you don't know poor little me!

Robert Browning: Nevertheless, Madame, I thank you.

[Mr. Browning exits]

Bella Hedley: Isn't he wonderful! It's he divine! The loveliest little shivers are wunning white down my back.