Quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I do not say everything I think (as has been said of me by master-critics) but I take every means to say what I think, which is different! — or I fancy so!

As to the spirits, I care less about what they are capable of communicating, than of the fact of there being communications. I certainly wouldn't set about building a system of theology out of their oracles. God forbid. They seem abundantly foolish, one must admit. There is probably, however, a mixture of good spirits and bad, foolish and wise, of the lower orders perhaps, in both kinds....

And all this reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...

The English newspapers have made me so angry, that I scarcely know whether I am as much ashamed, yet the shame is very great. As if the people of France had not a right to vote as they pleased! We understand nothing in England.

Though Robert always calls me Ba, and thinks it the prettiest name in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love but of deaf love.

It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr. Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courtship and engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after their marriage.

Earth's crammed with Heaven, But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.

To H.S. Boyd Monday, September 19, 1843. My own dear Friend, — I should have written instantly to explain myself out of appearances which did me injustice, only I have been in such distress as to have no courage for writing. Flush was stolen away, and for three days I could neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much more rational than cry.

Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence upon God.

In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie than from the consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel world. Formerly, when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has refused to eat from a strange hand.

With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of the city, and bribed them into giving back their victim. Money was the least thing to think of in such case; I would have given a thousand pounds if I had had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men was marvellous. They said that they had been 'about stealing Flush these two years,' and warned us plainly to take care of him for the future.

You will wonder at me, but these public affairs have half killed me. You know I can't take things quietly. Your complaint and mine, Fanny, are just opposite. For weeks and weeks, in my feverish state, I never closed my eyes without suffering 'punishment' under eternal articles of peace and unending lists of provisional governments. Do you wonder?

For the last week I have not been at all well, and indeed was obliged yesterday to go to bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where I contrived to abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord Byron's Life by Moore. To-day this abstraction is not necessary; I am much better; and, indeed, little remains of the indisposition but the vulgar fractions of a cough and cold.

He has resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath; we both shall....

You know — or perhaps you do not know — that there are two women whom I have hated all my life long — Lady Byron and Marie Louise.

More and more life is what we want' Tennyson wrote long ago, and that is the right want. Indifference to life is disease, and therefore not strength. But the life here is only half the apple — a cut out of the apple, I should say, merely meant to suggest the perfect round of fruit — and there is in the world now

I hear that George Sand is seldom at Paris now. She has devoted herself to play-writing, and employs a houseful of men, her son's friends and her own, in acting privately with her what she writes — trying it on a home stage before she tries it at Paris. Her son is a very ordinary young man of three-and-twenty, but she is fond of him....

Ha!----in their stead, their hunter sons! Ha, ha! they are on me----they hunt in a ring! Keep off! I brave you all at once, I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting! You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think: Did you ever stand still in your triumph, and shrink From the stroke of her wounded wing?

The world of books is still the world, I write, And both worlds have God's providence, thank God, To keep and hearten: with some struggle, indeed, Among the breakers, some hard swimming through The deeps - I lost breath in my soul sometimes And cried, "God save me if there's any God," But even so, God saved me; and, being dashed From error on to error, every turn Still brought me nearer to the central truth.

We have come here to dip me in warm sea-water, in order to an improvement in strength, for I have been very weak and unwell of late, as perhaps Mrs. Jameson has told you. But the sea and the change have brought me up again, as I hope they may yourself, and now I am looking forward to getting back to Italy for the winter, and perhaps to Rome.

So, of men, and so, of letters — books are men of higher stature, And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear; So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly into nature, Yet will lift the cry of "progress," as it trod from sphere to sphere.

acknowledges that Napoleon stands fully justified in making that peace. I cannot expect so much justice in an Englishman. He would rather bury his past mistake in a present mistake than simply confess it.

My spring is broken, and a separate exertion is necessary for the lifting up of each — and then it falls down again. I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now. Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor — the tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey — I don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of certain negligences — for instance, of this toward you.

I cannot believe of any woman that she can think of fame first. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! so cold, so empty to a woman with a heart.