English poet (1812-1889)
The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts!
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
Truth is within ourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
Shun death, is my advice.
ROBERT BROWNING
"Arcades Ambo"
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency.
ROBERT BROWNING
Cenciaja
Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.
ROBERT BROWNING
"Sordello"
Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
I have no little insight into the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits obliged to face each other for ever--prints put together in portfolios.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 26, 1845
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear, -- believe the aged friend --
Is just a chance o' the prize of learning love.
ROBERT BROWNING
A Death in the Desert
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
ROBERT BROWNING
"Andrea del Sarto"
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!
ROBERT BROWNING
"Fra Lippo Lippi"
I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered--that is for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 11, 1845
What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.
ROBERT BROWNING
"Jochanan Hakkadosh"
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.
ROBERT BROWNING
"The Flight of the Duchess"
Strange secrets are let out by Death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
For an instructed eye loves to see where the brush has dipped twice in lustrous colour, has lain insistingly along a favorite outline, dwelt lovingly in a grand shadow--for these "too muches" for the everybody's picture, are so many helps to the making out the real painter's picture as he had it in his brain.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, January 13, 1845
Out on the foolish phrase, but there's a hard rhyming without it.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 26, 1845
All service ranks the same with God,--
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
ROBERT BROWNING
Pippa Passes
I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I have done most of what is to be done, any lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me!
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there.
ROBERT BROWNING
The Inn Album