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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes | Quotes said by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #1

    If Thou Must Love Me

    If thou must love me, let it be for naught
    Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
    'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
    Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
    That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
    A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
    For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
    Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
    May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
    Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
    A creature might forget to weep, who bore
    Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
    But love me for love's sake, that evermore
    Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.


  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #2

    Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
    Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
    And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #3

    And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,
    Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties
    My hair...now could I but unloose my soul!
    We are sepulchred alive in this close world,
    And want more room.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #4

    And trade is art, and art's philosophy,
    In Paris.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #5

    And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
    The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
    And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
    Between our faces, to cast light on each? -
    I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach
    My hand to hold my spirits so far off
    From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof
    In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
    Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
    Commend my woman-love to thy belief, -
    Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
    And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
    By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
    Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #6

    And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
    From that same love this vindicating grace,
    To live on still in love, and yet in vain

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #7

    Books, books, books!
    I had found the secret of a garret room
    Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
    Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
    Among the giant fossils of my past,
    Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
    Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
    At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
    In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
    The first book first. And how I felt it beat
    Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
    An hour before the sun would let me read!
    My books!

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #8

    Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #9

    Earth's crammed with heaven...
    But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #10

    Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.
    We sit beside the headstone thus,
    And wish that name were carved for us.
    The moss reprints more tenderly
    The hard types of the mason's knife,
    As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
    With which we're tired, my heart and I ....

    In this abundant earth no doubt
    Is little room for things worn out:
    Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
    And if before the days grew rough
    We once were loved, used, - well enough,
    I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #11

    For tis not in mere death that men die most.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #12

    God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #13

    God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #14

    His answer was - not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of me - but simply that he loved me - he met argument with fact. He told me - that with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by, & that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman - that he loved now for the first time & the last.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #15

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
    My soul can reach

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #16

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
    My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
    For the ends of being and ideal grace.
    I love thee to the level of every day's
    Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
    I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
    I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
    I love thee with the passion put to use
    In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
    I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
    With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
    Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
    I shall but love thee better after death.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #17

    I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #18

    I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #19

    I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #20

    I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
    That only men incredulous of despair,
    Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
    Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
    Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
    In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
    Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
    Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
    Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
    Most like a monumental statue set
    In everlasting watch and moveless woe
    Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
    Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
    If it could weep, it could arise and go.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #21

    I thought once how Theocritus had sung
    Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
    Who each one in a gracious hand appears
    To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;
    And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
    I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
    The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
    Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
    A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,
    So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
    Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
    And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--
    Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there,
    The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #22

    If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #23

    If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #24

    In this abundant earth no doubt
    Is little room for things worn out:
    Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
    And if before the days grew rough
    We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough,
    I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #25

    Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #26

    Love me sweet
    With all thou art
    Feeling, thinking, seeing;
    Love me in the Lightest part,
    Love me in full Being.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #27

    My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
    And yet they seem alive and quivering
    Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
    And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
    This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight
    Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
    To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,
    Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...
    Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed
    As if God's future thundered on my past.
    This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled
    With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
    And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed
    If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #28

    My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #29

    My sun sets to rise again.

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quote #30

    No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

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