Robert Browning

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;....and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.

— Robert Browning

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

— Robert Browning

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

— Robert Browning

My sun sets to rise again.

— Robert Browning

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

— Robert Browning

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

— Robert Browning

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

— Robert Browning

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

— Robert Browning

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

— Robert Browning

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

— Robert Browning

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!

— Robert Browning

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

— Robert Browning

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

— Robert Browning

Rats! In fifty different sharps and flats.

— Robert Browning

Kiss me as if you made believe It's petals up.

— Robert Browning

Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.

— Robert Browning

The lie was deadAnd damned, and truth stood up instead.

— Robert Browning

Over my head his arm he flungAgainst the world.

— Robert Browning

There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest.

— Robert Browning

I trust in Nature for the stable lawsAnd God's.

— Robert Browning

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.

— Robert Browning

I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.

— Robert Browning

Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.

— Robert Browning

It is so horrible,Some future state revealed to us by Zeus

— Robert Browning

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

— Robert Browning

We loved, sir — used to meet: But then, how it was sweet!

— Robert Browning

Who hears music feels his solitude Peopled at once.

— Robert Browning

Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there.

— Robert Browning

Have you found your life distasteful? My sun sets to rise again.

— Robert Browning

I find earth not gray but rosy; Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

— Robert Browning

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

— Robert Browning

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!

— Robert Browning

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.

— Robert Browning

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

— Robert Browning

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —

— Robert Browning

The moment eternal — just that and no more — While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

— Robert Browning

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Sleep to wake.

— Robert Browning

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.

— Robert Browning

Strive and thrive!

— Robert Browning

Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

— Robert Browning

That we devote ourselves to God, is seenIn living just as though no God there were.

— Robert Browning

Be sure that GodNe'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.

— Robert Browning

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

— Robert Browning

I see my way as birds their trackless way.He guides me and the bird. In his good time.

— Robert Browning

Truth is within ourselves.

— Robert Browning

God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations.

— Robert Browning

Strange secrets are let out by Death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.

— Robert Browning

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

— Robert Browning

The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clungTo their first fault, and withered in their pride.

— Robert Browning

Every joy is gainAnd gain is gain, however small.

— Robert Browning

Jove strikes the Titans downBut when another rock would crown the work.

— Robert Browning

The peerless cup afloatSwims bearing high above her head.

— Robert Browning

I give the fight up: let there be an end,I want to be forgotten even by God.

— Robert Browning

Progress isThe law of life: man is not Man as yet.

— Robert Browning

Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?Power shall fall short in or exceed!

— Robert Browning

The year's at the spring, All's right with the world!

— Robert Browning

Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,—Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.

— Robert Browning

In the morning of the world,When earth was nigher heaven than now.

— Robert Browning

All service ranks the same with God,—Are we: there is no last nor first.

— Robert Browning

When is man strong until he feels alone?

— Robert Browning

The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth.

— Robert Browning

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

Oh, to be in England Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf.

— Robert Browning

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, The first fine careless rapture!

— Robert Browning

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.

— Robert Browning

How good is man's life, the mere living! Forever in joy!

— Robert Browning

'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

— Robert Browning

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

— Robert Browning

Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!

— Robert Browning

If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents.

— Robert Browning

You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls.

— Robert Browning

I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.

— Robert Browning

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

— Robert Browning

Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

— Robert Browning

Italy, my Italy!Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'"

— Robert Browning

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.

— Robert Browning

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

— Robert Browning

When the fight begins within himself,A man's worth something.

— Robert Browning

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The superstitious atheist.

— Robert Browning

Lofty designs must close in like effects.

— Robert Browning

Rafael made a century of sonnets.

— Robert Browning

Other heights in other lives, God willing.

— Robert Browning

God be thanked, the meanest of his creaturesOne to show a woman when he loves her!

— Robert Browning

Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!

— Robert Browning

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

— Robert Browning

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

— Robert Browning

The body sprangAt once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!

— Robert Browning

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

— Robert Browning

For I say this is death and the sole death,—And lack of love from love made manifest.

— Robert Browning

Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

— Robert Browning

The ultimate, angels' law,There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

— Robert Browning

Grow old along with me! Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

— Robert Browning

Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

— Robert Browning

All instincts immature, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

— Robert Browning

Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup.

— Robert Browning

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? Thee, God, who mouldest men.

— Robert Browning

Love is energy of life.

— Robert Browning

So, take, and use thy work: Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

— Robert Browning

The rain set early in tonight,

— Robert Browning

Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore: A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.

— Robert Browning

A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact I'the touch and sight.

— Robert Browning

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

— Robert Browning

A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?

— Robert Browning

Go practise if you please For Christ's particular love's sake!

— Robert Browning

In the great right of an excessive wrong.

— Robert Browning

Was never evening yetBut seemed far beautifuller than its day.

— Robert Browning

Oh child that didst despise thy life so much "Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"

— Robert Browning

The curious crime, the fineFelicity and flower of wickedness.

— Robert Browning

Why comes temptation, but for man to meetAnd so be pedestaled in triumph?

— Robert Browning

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Life’s business being just the terrible choice.

— Robert Browning

Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

— Robert Browning

It is the glory and good of ArtOf speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.

— Robert Browning

Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)Linking our England to his Italy.

— Robert Browning

The sprinkled isles,Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.

— Robert Browning

And I have written three books on the soul,And putting us to ignorance again.

— Robert Browning

Just my vengeance complete,So, I was afraid!

— Robert Browning

Oh never starWas lost here but it rose afar.

— Robert Browning

When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?

— Robert Browning

The sin I impute to each frustrute ghostThough the end in sight was a vice, I say.

— Robert Browning

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

— Robert Browning

Just for a handful of silver he left us,Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

— Robert Browning

We shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence;Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.

— Robert Browning

They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change:We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store.

— Robert Browning

What's come to perfection perishes.Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.

— Robert Browning

O woman-country! wooed not wed,Laid to their hearts instead.

— Robert Browning

That great browAnd the spirit-small hand propping it.

— Robert Browning

If two lives join, there is oft a scar.One near one is too far.

— Robert Browning

Only I discernOf finite hearts that yearn.

— Robert Browning

Round and round, like a dance of snowSculptured in stone on the poet's pages.

— Robert Browning

How he lies in his rights of a man!Surprise of the change.

— Robert Browning

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,How strange it seems, and new!

— Robert Browning

He who did well in war just earns the rightTo begin doing well in peace.

— Robert Browning

And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,While Northern thought is slow and durable.

— Robert Browning

A people is but the attempt of manyAre singly of more value than they all.

— Robert Browning

Was there nought better than to enjoy?No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

— Robert Browning

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

— Robert Browning

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

— Robert Browning

Then welcome each rebuffLearn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

— Robert Browning

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

What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me.

— Robert Browning

How sad and bad and mad it was!But then, how it was sweet!

— Robert Browning

So may a glory from defect arise.

— Robert Browning

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

— Robert Browning

This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever.

— Robert Browning

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

— Robert Browning

It's wiser being good than bad;Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.

— Robert Browning

But how carve way i' the life that lies before,If bent on groaning ever for the past?

— Robert Browning

Better have failed in the high aim, as I,As, God be thanked! I do not.

— Robert Browning

"With this same keyDid Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

— Robert Browning

God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,Rests never on the track until it reach

— Robert Browning

Good, to forgive;Dying, we live.

— Robert Browning

Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?

— Robert Browning

Sky—what a scowl of cloudSplendid, a star!

— Robert Browning

Wanting is—what?Where is the blot?

— Robert Browning

But little do or can the best of us:That little is achieved through Liberty.

— Robert Browning

There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music.

— Robert Browning

A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.

— Robert Browning

God is the perfect poet.

— Robert Browning

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

— Robert Browning

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

— Robert Browning