ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING QUOTES II

English poet (1806-1861)

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Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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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. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they do, are they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them unfulfilled? Oh, this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of the window--at least, for me.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Nay, if there's room for poets in the world
A little overgrown, (I think there is)
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne's, -- this live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,
Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Lips shook
Like a rose leaning o'er a brook,
Which vibrates though it is not struck.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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'Twas a yellow rose,
By that south window of the little house,
My cousin Romney gathered with his hand
On all my birthdays, for me, save the last;
And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,
For roses to stay after.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Souls were dangerous things to carry straight
Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Since when was genius found respectable?

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, faint headed,
And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Of the great body of critics ... the fact of their influence is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the world over. But the influence is for today, for this hour--not for tomorrow and the day after--unless indeed ... the poet do himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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There, the brows of mild repression--there, the lips of silent passion,
Curved like an archer's bow to send the bitter arrows out.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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