Quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

He lives most life whoever breathes most air.

We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake.

Life treads on life, and heart on heart; We press too close in church and mart To keep a dream or grave apart.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.

The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!

My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God.

She lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?

This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.

Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

For frequent tears have run; The colours from my life.

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

Two human loves make one divine.

Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken.

Since when was genius found respectable?

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach

Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.

An ignorance of means may minister To greatness, but an ignorance of aims Make it impossible to be great at all.

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.

The face, which, duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun, To mark all bright hours of the day With hourly love, is dimmed away And yet my days go on, go on.

The man, most man, Works best for men: and, if most man indeed, He gets his manhood plainest from his soul.

The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.