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Robert Browning
160 quotes
“The curious crime, the fine Felicity and flower of wickedness.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) first seen 1185 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book X, line 1185
“White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) first seen 1235 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book X, line 1235
“Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) first seen 1560 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book XI, line 1560
“It is the glory and good of Art That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) Linking our England to his Italy.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! So, I was afraid!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh never star Was lost here but it rose afar.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven; Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O woman-country! wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How sad and bad and mad it was! But then, how it was sweet!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So may a glory from defect arise.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face. . . . . . . . No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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; That what began best can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,— As, God be thanked! I do not.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart" once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good, to forgive; Best, to forget! Living, we fret; Dying, we live.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sky—what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wanting is—what? Summer redundant, Blueness abundant, Where is the blot?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, gathering in its ancient market-place, Talked group with restless group; and not a face But wrath made livid, for among them were Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care To feast him. Fear had long since taken root In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit, The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way It worked while each grew drunk ! men grave and grey Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro. Letting the silent luxury trickle slow About the hollows where a heart should be; But the young gulped with a delirious glee Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood At the fierce news”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He gathers earth's whole good into his arms; Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise, Marching to fortune, not surprised by her. One great aim, like a guiding-star, above— Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift His manhood to the height that takes the prize; A prize not near — lest overlooking earth He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote, So that he rest upon his path content: But day by day, while shimmering grows shine, And the faint circlet prophesies the orb, He sees so much as, just evolving these, The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength, To due completion, will suffice this life, And lead him at his grandest to the grave. After this star, out of a night he springs; A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts, Nor, as from each to each exultingly He passes, overleaps one grade of joy. This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift Of God and man, — reality, tradition, Fancy and fact — so well environ him, That as a mystic panoply they serve — Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind, And work his purpose out with half the world, While he, their master, dexterously slipt From such encumbrance, is meantime employed With his own prowess on the other half. Thus shall he prosper, every day's success Adding, to what is he, a solid strength — An aery might to what encircles him, Till at the last, so life's routine lends help, That as the Emperor only breathes and moves, His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk Become a comfort or a portent, how He trails his ermine take significance, — Till even his power shall cease to be most power, And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare Peril their earth its bravest, first and best, Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends— The man of men, the spirit of all flesh, The fiery centre of an earthly world!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do what many dream of, all their lives, — Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive — you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat — Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) — so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) first seen 1774 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
“What wonder if the novel claim had clashed With old requirement, seemed to supersede Too much the customary law? But, brave, Thou at first prompting of what I call God, And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend, Accept the obligation laid on thee, Mother elect, to save the unborn child, As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from the Ever Living: — didst resist — Anticipate the office that is mine — And with his own sword stay the upraised arm, The endeavour of the wicked, and defend Him who, — again in my default, — was there For visible providence: one less true than thou To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right, Approved less far in all docility To all instruction, — how had such an one Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source