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.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Neighbors
You were made perfectly to be loved – and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Romance
He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: World
Every wish is like a prayer—with God.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Wishes, One liners
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!
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Women
Who so loves believes the impossible.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Love
Two human loves make one divine.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Marriage
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face. A gauntlet with a gift in’t.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Prayer
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell by reiteration chiefly.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Names
And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
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.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need; by sun and candle-light.
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
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.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Love
What is art but 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?
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
The devil’s most devilish when respectable.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Evil
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.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Remembrance
Eternity stands always fronting God; a stern colossal image, with blind eyes, and grand dim lips, that murmur evermore, “God—God—God!”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Eternity
He lives most life whoever breathes most air.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Hurt a fly! He would not for the world: he’s pitiful to flies even. “Sing,” says he, “and tease me still, if that’s your way, poor insect.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Light tomorrow with today.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Tomorrow, Future, The Present
If 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.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Romance
But the child’s sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Children
The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, to put on when you’re weary—or a stool. To stumble over and vex you… “curse that stool!” Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean and sleep, and dream of something we are not, but would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this… that, after all, we are paid the worth of our work, perhaps.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Housework, Women
And lips say “God be pitiful,” who never said, “God be praised.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Religion
If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Desire, Faith
We overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination… down our earth to rake … .
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Exaggeration
God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Gift, Dreams, God
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Words
I think it frets the saints in heaven to see
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort, in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Men
It is not merely the likeness which is precious… but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing… the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist’s work ever produced.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Topics: Photography
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Christina Rossetti English Poet
- Anne Bradstreet American Poet
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon English Poet, Novelist
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu English Aristocrat, Poet
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- John Dryden English Poet
- Christopher Marlowe English Playwright
- Robert Browning English Poet
- Algernon Charles Swinburne English Poet
- Coventry Patmore English Writer
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