Elizabeth barrett browning quotes

Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll- Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

Whoso loves, believes in the impossible

I f thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way Of speaking gently ... for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and, certes, brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee-and love so wrought, May be unwrought so.

What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.

God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love, thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.

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.

An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.

Whatever's lost, it first was won.

True knowledge comes only through suffering.

The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.

There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.

Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!

Since when was genius found respectable?

The essence of all beauty, I call love.

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.

Two human loves make one divine.

He who breathes deepest lives most.

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

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

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?

If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.

I heard an angel speak last night/And he said, "Write!"

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

All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.

Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, Whose deeds, both great and small Are close-knot strands of an unbroken thread There love ennobles all. The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells The book of life the shining record tells. Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life-workings. A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt serve thyself by every sense, Of service which thou renderest.

I should not dare to call my soul my own.

Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.

truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.

The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!

What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.

Guess now who holds thee?'--'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, . . . 'Not Death, but Love.

With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.

Who so loves believes the impossible.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach

When we first met and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. . . .

A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.

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.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.

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

God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song.

And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.

Gaze up at the stars knowing that I see the same sky and wish the same sweet dreams.

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

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

A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.

Silence is the best response to a fool.

O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road Singing beside the hedge.

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

A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.

Love that endures, from life that disappears!

Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.

Yet how proud we are, In daring to look down upon ourselves!

Too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.

I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

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.

Much of the possibility of being cheerful comes from the faculty of throwing oneself beyond oneself.

XI I sang his name instead of song; Over and over I sang his name: Backward and forward I sang it along, With my sweetest notes, it was still the same! I sang it low, that the slave-girls near Might never guess, from what they could hear, That all the song was a name.

Earth's crammed with Heaven.

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.

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

Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it's little.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love.

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!

What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?

The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.

The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.

My sun sets to raise again.

This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.

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

If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.

Behold me! I am worthy Of thy loving, for I love thee!

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

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears.

We can't separate our humanity from our poetry.

A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.

I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.

In your patience ye are strong.

You're something between a dream and a miracle.

I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Art is much, but love is more.

Get leave to work In this world,--'tis the best you get at all.

Never say No when the world says Aye.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

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.

I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle light...I love thee with the breath,smiles,t ears,of all my life.

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental.

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

Nosegays! leave them for the waking, Throw them earthward where they grew Dim are such, beside the breaking Amaranths he looks unto. Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused the trouble in the garden of Eden.

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

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.

He lives most life whoever breathes most air.

Light tomorrow with today!

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

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