1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
page 2

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime.

Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15 she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health.

In the 1840s Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her cousin, John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838 and she wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in the child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth.

Elizabeth's volume Poems brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding she was indeed disinherited by her father. The couple moved to Italy in 1846, where she would live for the rest of her life. They had one son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. She died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.

Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" and Aurora Leigh . Wikipedia  

✵ 6. March 1806 – 29. June 1861   •   Other names Elizabeth Barret Browningová, ಎಲಿಜಬೆತ್ ಬ್ಯಾರೆಟ್ ಬ್ರೌನಿಂಗ್
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 88   quotes 44   likes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

“The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away,
And yet my days go on, go on.

And cold before my summer's done,
And deaf in Nature's general tune,
And fallen too low for special fear,
And here, with hope no longer here,
While the tears drop, my days go on.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

St. 3 - 4.
De Profundis (1862)

Love , Fear , Hope , Nature

“Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To George Sand, A Desire http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/ebbrowning/bl-ebbrown-togeorge1.htm (1844).

Heart

“The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book II.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Beauty

“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Grief http://www.webterrace.com/browning/Grief.htm, l. 1 (1844).

“But since he had
The genuis to be loved, why let him have
The justice to be honoured in his grave.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Crowned and Buried, xxvii reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Justice

“"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Lady's Yes http://www.webterrace.com/browning/The%20Ladys%20Yes.htm, st. 1 (1844).

Night

“There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Vision of Poets (1844)

World , Tear , Laughter , Time

“Nay, if there's room for poets in the world
A little overgrown, (I think there is)
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne's, — this live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,
Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bk. V, l. 200-207.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Age , World , Thinking , Passion

“The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bianca Among the Nightingales http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3035&poem=127031, st. 1 (1862).

Love , World , Search , Strong

“Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book IV.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Hope

“God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

No. XXIV
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

God

“That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life;
While I.. it seemed no sun had shone on me.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bk. IV, l. 1139-1141.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Life , Sun

“Dreams of doing good
For good-for-nothing people.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book II.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

People , Dreams

“Therefore to this dog will I,
Tenderly not scornfully,
Render praise and favor:
With my hand upon his head,
Is my benediction said
Therefore and for ever.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To Flush, My Dog http://www.webterrace.com/browning/To%20Flush%20My%20Dog.htm, st. 14 (1844).

Dogs

“Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear, and fall, and miss Thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 247.

Fear , Art

“God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bk. II, l. 952-954.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

God

“Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Vision of Poets (1844)

Life , Death , Knowledge , Suffering