ThursdayFeb 26, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Robert Browning (May 7, 1812 - December 12, 1889) was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.
Genius has somewhat of the infantine; But of the childish not a touch or taint.
And gain is gain, however small.
The common problem, yours, mine, everyones Is not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means.
No work begun shall ever pause for death.
Truth that peeps Over the glasss edge when dinners done.
Truth never hurt the teller.
Tis an awkward thing to play with souls.
Theres a new tribunal now, Higher than Godsthe educated mans!
The only faults with time; All men become good creatures: but so slow!
Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.
How sad and bad and mad it was But then, how it was sweet!
All poetry is difficult to read The sense of it anyhow.
Such ever was loves way: to rise, it stoops.
Alls love, yet alls law.
Oh, our manhoods prime vigor! No spirit feels waste. Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair, And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
Who knows most, doubts most.
That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundreds soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world hereshould he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplext Seeking shall find Him.
Good, to forgive; Best, to forget! Living, we fret; Dying, we live.
Faultless to a fault.
All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board whitewe call it black.
But facts are facts and flinch not.
Fear death?to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet t
The great mind knows the power of gentleness.
If you get simple beauty and nought else, You get about the best thing God invents.
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
'With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart' once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
Of what I call God, And fools call Nature.
In Gods good time, Which does not always fall on Saturday When the world looks for wages.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty.
Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go Floating the women faded for ages, Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.
There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest.
It 's wiser being good than bad; It 's safer being meek than fierce; It 's fitter being sane than mad. My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That after Last returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched;
He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace.
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) Linking our England to his Italy.
Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! So, I was afraid!
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas, Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides,one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her!
If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.
So absolutely good is truth, truth never hurts The teller.
I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures. I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward,Nature's good And God's.
The best way to excape his ire Is, not to seem too happy.
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Why stay we on the earth except to grow?
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture.
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
A minutes success pays the failure of years.
Oh never star Was lost here but it rose afar.
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.
Say not 'a small event!' Why 'small'? Costs it more pain that this ye call A 'great event' should come to pass From that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture.
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new!
All service ranks the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Æschylus, because we read his plays!
Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
It was roses, roses all the way.
In the great right of an excessive wrong.
Rafael made a century of sonnets.
There 's a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the purest. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.
Most progress is most failure.
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts: God is, they are; Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.
Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night youll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!
Into the street the piper stepped, Smiling first a little smile As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while. And the piper advanced And the children followed.
God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations.
They are perfect; how else?they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?we have time in store.
I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one songand in my brain I sing it; Drew one angelborne, see, on my bosom!
What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven; Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
O woman-country! wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead.
Any nose May ravage with impunity a rose.
Lets contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before Love, Only sleep.
Where the apple reddens Never pry Lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.
Measure your minds height by the shade it casts.
For I say this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.
Love, hope, fear, faith these make humanity; These are its sign, and note and character.
Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!
God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
Look not thou down but up!
It 's a long lane that knows no turnings.
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear (believe the aged friend), Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
Pippas Song The years at the spring, The days at the morn; Mornings at seven; The hillsides dew-pearld; The larks on the wing; The snails on the thorn; Gods in His heaven Alls right with the world!
Life is an empty dream.
I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.
Have you found your life distasteful? My life did, and does, smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I 'll complain. Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.
The lie was dead And damned, and truth stood up instead.
Less is more.
The ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!
Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet.
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up and begin again.
Ever judge of men by their professions. For though the bright moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it, and know the man by it, I say, not by his performance; which is half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's own. I judge people by what they might be, not are, nor will be.
Every joy is gain, and gain is gain, however small.
Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais): 'Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it 'Italy.'
The sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.
'T is not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do.
Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive, what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
Sing, riding 's a joy! For me I ride.
Over my head his arm he flung Against the world.
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed, As, God be thanked! I do not.
Lose who mayI still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they!
Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.
Where my heart lies let my brain lie also.
This could but have happened once, And we missed it, lost it forever.
Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: See all, nor be afraid!
But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?
That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it.
A common grayness silvers everything.
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.
The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dewpearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven, All's right with the world!
God's in his heaven: All's right with the world.
He guides me and the bird. In His good time!
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.
Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
So may a glory from defect arise.
It is the glory and good of Art That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
What a thing friendship is World without end.
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are.
When the fight begins within himself, A man 's worth something.
And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient, comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.
The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.
Day! Faster and more fast. Oer nights brim, day boils at last.
Was never evening yet But seemed far beautifuller than its day.
In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now.
Are there not, dear Michael, Two points in the adventure of the diver, One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge; One, when a prince he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge.
Lofty designs must close in like effects.
We shall march prospering,not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.
How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.
Death was past, life not come: so he waited.
O never star Was lost; here We all aspire to heaven and there is heaven Above us. If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press Gods lamp Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge some day.
The curious crime, the fine Felicity and flower of wickedness.
I hear you reproach, 'But delay was best, For their end was a crime.' Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! ...... Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Isthe unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.
All that is, at all, Lasts ever. past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
The body sprang At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,no!
Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach.
I give the fight up: let there be an end, A privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.
Days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me.
A man in armour is his armours slave.
When is man strong until he feels alone? Colombe's Birthday
The day's at the morn; Mornings at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven All's right with the world.
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee; All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem; In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea; Breath and bloom, shade and shine, wonder, wealth, andhow far above them Truth, that's brighter than gem, Truth, that's purer than pearl, Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe all were for me In the kiss of one girl.
A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all.
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.
Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-west died away.
For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless god.
Truth that peeps Over the edge when dinner's done, And body gets its sop and holds its noise And leaves soul free a little.
The grand Perhaps.
Everyone soon or late comes round by Rome.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
Poetry puts the infinite within the finite.
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Love is energy of life.
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.
For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.
Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Ambition is not what man does... But what man would do.
Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory is departed!
When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?
Never glad confident morning again!
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast.
Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?
Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
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