Quotes from Robert Browning

The rain set early in tonight, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its best to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up and all the cottage warm;

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

God is the perfect poet.

On a day like today I am stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.

What's the earth With all its art, verse, music, worth — Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?

Without love, our earth is a tomb

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.

Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, "Italy".

In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power — And thus we half-men struggle.

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.

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

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

Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side.

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.

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!

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

There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life.

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.

If all the world is a stage and life is just a play upon it, get me two seats in the stalls.

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!

Faultless to a fault.

I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.

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

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