Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes (1806-1861)

Poet

About Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6 1806 – June 29 1861) was an English poet and the wife of Robert Browning.

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“By thunders of white silence.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.”
“Every wish
Is like a prayer—with God.”
“Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.”
“Dreams of doing good
For good-for-nothing people.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Since when was genius found respectable?”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine.”
“Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“But so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.”
“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.
”
“The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”
“But since he had
The genius to be loved, why let him have
The justice to be honoured in his grave.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
The world was worthy of such men.”
“"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death," I said. But there
The silver answer rang—"Not Death, but Love."”
“She has seen the mystery hid
Under Egypt's pyramid:
By those eyelids pale and close
Now she knows what Rhamses knows.”
“There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life;
While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me.”
“Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,
shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.”
“"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.”
“Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.”
“Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes by Topic

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Flowers 10 quotes

“With her ankles sunken in asphodel She wept for the roses of earth which fell.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love 9 quotes

“Whoever lives true life, will love true love.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Roses 8 quotes

“Red as a rose of Harpocrate.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Poetry about love 7 quotes

“Behold me! I am worthy Of thy loving, for I love thee!”
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Work 5 quotes

“Free men freely work: Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Lilies 4 quotes

“* * * Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Patience 3 quotes

“In your patience ye are strong.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Prayer 3 quotes

“Every wish Is like a prayer — with God.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Grief 3 quotes

“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Kissing 3 quotes

“Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Poets 3 quotes

“God's prophets of the Beautiful, These Poets were.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Sleep 3 quotes

“Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is, For gift or grace, surpassing this— "He giveth His beloved sleep."”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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What Elizabeth Barrett Browning Said About Others

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Women 10 quotes

“Women cannot judge for men.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Luís de Camões 2 quotes

“Camoens, with that look he had, Compelling India's Genius sad From the wave through the Lusiad, With murmurs of a purple ocean Indrawn in vibrative emotion Along the verse!”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning on William Shakespeare

“There, Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world. Oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Quotes About Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Gerda Lerner on Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models...Elizabeth Barrett Browning admired the work of George Sand and Mme. de Staël, while her work, in its turn, was an inspiration to Emily Dickinson.,,all of the American nineteenth-century woman's rights leaders considered Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh an inspiration. The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Alicia Ostriker on Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Anger has always played a role in poetry...You can find powerful anger in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems on slavery and child labor. In her anti-slavery poem “A Curse for a Nation,” she has an angel explaining that “A curse from the lips of womanhood / Is very salt, and bitter, and good.” Barrett Browning was roundly condemned in her own time for writing about politics.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Naomi Shihab Nye on Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Life Loves/to change, wrote poet John Masefield,/in the cobbled town of Ledbury, Herefordshire,/Elizabeth Barrett Browning's town too./.../I felt drunk on general coziness.../thinking of Elizabeth,/whose "father never spoke to her again," once she/had a child (what was his problem?),/and Masefield, who suffered intense seasickness/yet wrote about going down to the sea/as if it were his favorite act/.../Life loves to change-but some of us want to/stay.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Adrienne Rich on Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Emily Dickinson was always stirred by the existences of women like George Eliot or Elizabeth Barrett, who possessed strength of mind, articulateness, and energy. (She once characterized Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale as "holy"-one suspects she merely meant, "great.")”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

About Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6 1806 – June 29 1861) was an English poet and the wife of Robert Browning.