Quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality of the power, which is in every way most repulsive to me....

Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?

Then there was a fight between our oxen-drivers, one of them attempting to stab the other with a knife, and Robert rushing in between till Peni and I were nearly frantic with fright. No harm happened, however, except that Robert had his trousers torn. And we escaped afterwards certain banditti, who stopped a carriage only the day before on the very road we travelled, and robbed it of sixty-two scudi.

Have you read 'Shirley,' and is it as good as 'Jane Eyre'? We heard not long since that Mr. Chorley had discovered the author, the 'Currer Bell.' A woman, most certainly.

I love and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the light of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the other day, and strugggled and kicked to get to me because he saw Flush leaning his pretty head on my lap. There's a great strife for privileges between those two.

Well, then, I am getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet and mystic, and we are growing to be the truest of friends.

While I throw off the ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.

Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the West Indians. That is settled. The consternation here is very great. Nevertheless I am glad, and always shall be, that the negroes are — virtually — free!

Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach.

The religious character was a sufficient objection — their character of prayer. Mr. Dilke begged me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with the secular character of the journal!

Perhaps she doesn't care for anybody by this time — who knows? She wrote one, or two, or three kind notes to me, and promised to 'venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris; but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, and she told a friend of ours that she 'liked us'; only we always felt that we couldn't penetrate — couldn't really touch her — it was all vain.

Don't believe everything you hear. But I am really in a way to be well, if I could have such sunshine as we have been burning in lately, and a fair field of peace besides

Why shouldn't Miss Martineau's apocalyptic housemaid tell us whether Flush has a soul, and what is its 'future destination'? As to the fact of his soul, I have long had a strong opinion on it. The 'grand peut-être,' to which 'without revelation' the human argument is reduced, covers dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

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

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!

Art is much, but love is more.

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.

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.

Whoso loves, believes in the impossible

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

The essence of all beauty, I call love.