Quotes from Robert Browning

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

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.

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.

Make us happy and you make us good.

Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining hope means recognizing fear.

My sun sets to rise again.

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

Look not down but up!

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

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.

In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.

T'was a thief said the last kind word to Christ. Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

A lion may die of an ass's kick.

The year's at the spring And 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!

Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her- Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her

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

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.

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.

Each life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

I felt a strange delight in causing my decay.

Women hate a debt as men a gift.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened the next tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss . . .

I know what I want and what I might gain, and yet, how profitless to know.