ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING QUOTES

English poet (1806-1861)

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, sir, I say.
Colours seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The Devil's most devilish when respectable.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in 't.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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The denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past --
Oh, never call it loving!

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Knowledge by suffering entereth;
And Life is perfected by Death.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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I have wondered at you sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works into the great mill of the rank, popular playhouse, to be ground to pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one, would as soon have my soul among lions.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Whatever's lost, it first was won.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Every wish
Is like a prayer--with God.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Of writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,--
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers--
And that cannot stop their tears.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

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