Browning, Robert quotes

1812-1889 British Poet

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.
Browning, Robert
Defeat

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
Browning, Robert
Catholicism

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire.
Browning, Robert
Desire

There s a new tribunal now higher than God s --The educated man s!
Browning, Robert
Education

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
Browning, Robert
Emotions

Oh the wild joys of living! The leaping from rock to rock ... the cool silver shock of the plunge in a pool s living waters.
Browning, Robert
Joy

Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.
Browning, Robert
Ignorance

Where the apple reddens never pry -- lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.
Browning, Robert
Curiosity

Our interest s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.
Browning, Robert
Fiction

So free we seem, so fettered we are!
Browning, Robert
Freedom

And gain is gain, however small.
Browning, Robert
Gain

A man s reach should exceed his grasp, or what s heaven for?
Browning, Robert
Goals

Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
Browning, Robert
Hope

Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!
Browning, Robert
Lovers

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
Browning, Robert
Love

I count life just a stuff to try the soul s strength on.
Browning, Robert
Life and Living

Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.
Browning, Robert
Inspiration

Go practice if you please with men and women: leave a child alone for Christ s particular love s sake!
Browning, Robert
Missionaries

Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Browning, Robert
Possibilities

My sun sets to rise again.
Browning, Robert
Optimism

Less is more.
Browning, Robert
Possessions

That s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!
Browning, Robert
Song and Singing

The grand perhaps! We look on helplessly, there the old misgivings, crooked questions are.
Browning, Robert
Uncertainty

Truth lies within ourselves: it takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness and to Know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape than in effecting entry for light supposed to be without.
Browning, Robert
Truth

Truth never hurts the teller.
Browning, Robert
Truth

It is best to be yourself, imperial, plain and true.
Browning, Robert
Sincerity

A minute s success pays the failure of years.
Browning, Robert
Success

When the fight begins within himself, a man s worth something.
Browning, Robert
Self-control

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Browning, Robert
Autumn

What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.
Browning, Robert
Ambition

Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
Browning, Robert
Ambition

Ambition is not what man does... but what man would do.
Browning, Robert
Ambition

Ah, but a man s reach should exceed his grasp, or what s a heaven for?
Browning, Robert
Ambition

Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry s haunting curse, the Incomplete!
Browning, Robert
Effort

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Browning, Robert
Courage

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.
Browning, Robert
Age and Aging

What s a man s age? He must hurry more, that s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
Browning, Robert
Age and Aging

Grow old with me the best is yet to come.
Browning, Robert
Age and Aging

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!
Browning, Robert
Writers and Writing

The year s at the spring; And day s at the morn; Morning s at seven; The hill-side 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!
Browning, Robert
World

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.
Browning, Robert
Youth