Robert Browning quotes
Robert Browning (1812–1889): English poet and playwright. The library holds 118 quotes by Robert Browning, drawn from Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, A Death in the Desert and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, faith, nature, time, art, happiness
The best-known Robert Browning quotes
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Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a Heaven for?
Andrea del Sarto, Men and Women -
The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn: God’s in his heaven— All’s right with the world!
Pippa Passes, 1841 (Pippa’s song) -
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.
Rabbi Ben Ezra, Dramatis Personæ -
’Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do.
Saul. xvii -
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.
A Death in the Desert -
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.’
De Gustibus. ii -
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.
Luria, Act v -
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.
A Death in the Desert -
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!
Saul. ix -
Progress is the law of life—man is not man as yet.
Paracelsus -
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?
The Ring and the Book. The Pope, Line 1185 -
And inasmuch as feeling, the East’s gift, Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.
Luria, Act v -
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!
Memorabilia. i -
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.
Paracelsus, Part i -
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.
Saul. vi -
He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace.
Luria, Act ii -
When the fight begins within himself, A man’s worth something.
Men and Women. Bishop Blougram’s Apology -
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children’s dower.
Home Thoughts from Abroad -
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.
A Death in the Desert -
Measure your mind’s height by the shade it casts!
Paracelsus -
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.
A Grammarian’s Funeral -
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
One Word More. xii -
God’s in his heaven: All’s right with the world.
Pippa Passes, Part i -
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
Rabbi Ben Ezra -
There’s a woman like a dewdrop, she’s so purer than the purest.
A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, Act i. Sc. iii -
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain.
La Saisiaz, Line 170 -
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,—Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
Pippa Passes, Part ii -
This could but have happened once,—And we missed it, lost it forever.
Youth and Art. xvii -
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life’s business being just the terrible choice.
The Ring and the Book. The Pope, Line 1236 -
What’s come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven; Works done least rapidly art most cherishes.
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Love is the only good in the world. Henceforth be loved as heart can love, Or brain devise, or hand approve.
Flight of the Duchess, Pt. xv -
What matter though I doubt at every pore… If finally I have a life to show, The thing I did, brought out in evidence Against the thing done to me underground By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
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All service ranks the same with God,—With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.
Pippa Passes, Part iv -
Things are where things are, and, as fate has willed, So shall they be fulfilled.
Agamemnon -
Must we count Life a curse and not a blessing, summed-up in its whole amount, Help and hindrance, joy and sorrow?
La Saisiaz, Line 206 -
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,—As, God be thanked! I do not.
The Inn Album. iv -
Stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose to make sweet the life at large.
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(We) feel that life is large, and the world small, So wait till life have passed from out the world.
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Life just the stuff To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.
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Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it; Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!
One Word More. xix -
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Aeschylus, because we read his plays!
Cleon -
Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed! So, I was afraid!
Instans Tyrannus. vii -
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture.
Home-Thoughts from Abroad. ii -
O woman-country! wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth’s male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead.
By the Fireside. vi -
No thought which ever stirred A human breast should be untold.
Paracelsus, Sc. 2 -
Let my hand—This hand, lie in your own—my own true friend! Hand in hand with you.
Paracelsus, Sc. 5 -
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed.
The Inn Album, iv -
True love works never for the loved one so, Nor spares skin-surface, smoothing truth away.
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In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now.
Pippa Passes, Part iii -
Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed.
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Wide our world displays its worth, man’s strife and strife’s success, All the good and beauty, wonder crowning wonder, Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, nothing less.
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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.
Women and Roses -
O let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast.
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Miles and miles of gold and green Where the sunflowers blow In a solid glow.
Lovers’ Quarrel, St. 6 -
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it.
One Word More, xvii -
Trees can smile in light at the sinking sun Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look On a departing lover—most serene.
Pauline, Line 726 -
God is the perfect poet, Who in His person acts His own creations.
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Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Paracelsus, Sc. i -
And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.
Cleon -
All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now Than flesh helps soul.
Where these quotes come from
- Paracelsus (12 quotes)
- Pippa Passes (7 quotes)
- A Death in the Desert (4 quotes)
- Luria (4 quotes)
- The Ring and the (4 quotes)
- One Word More (4 quotes)
- Rabbi Ben Ezra (3 quotes)
- Saul (3 quotes)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .