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Robert Browning Quotes
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Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

Browning's early career began promisingly, but was not a success. The long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens, but in 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as wilfully obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period and developed a more personal style.

In 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of history's most famous literary marriages. They went to live in Italy, a country he called "my university", and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period.

When Browning died in 1889, he was regarded as a sage and philosopher-poet who through his writing had made contributions to Victorian social and political discourse – as in the poem Caliban upon Setebos, which some critics have seen as a comment on the theory of evolution, which had recently been put forward by Darwin and others. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive. Such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century.

Browning's admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Among living writers, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and A. S. Byatt's Possession refer directly to Browning's work.

Today Browning's critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. His most popular poems include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, the diptych Meeting at Night, the patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad, and the children's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. His abortive dinner-party recital of How They Brought The Good News was recorded on an Edison wax cylinder, and is believed to be the oldest surviving recording made in the United Kingdom of a notable person.

✵ 7. May 1812 – 12. December 1889
Robert Browning photo
Robert Browning: 179   quotes 205   likes

Robert Browning Quotes

“Our aspirations are our possibilities.”

Robert Browning

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

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 2, line 112.
Paracelsus (1835)

Death , Secret , World

“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 By the Fireside

By the Fireside, xlvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

The lost Leader, ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning

Old Pictures in Florence, xvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Change , Time , Perfection

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

Robert Browning A Blot in the 'Scutcheon

Bells and Pomegranates No. V: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843), Act i, scene iii.

“A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

“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

"The Flight of the Duchess", line 881.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Youth , Age

“Rafael made a century of sonnets.”

Robert Browning

Stanza ii.
One Word More (1855)

“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!”

Robert Browning

Stanza xix.
One Word More (1855)

Angels , Singing

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

Robert Browning Pippa Passes

Part II.
Pippa Passes (1841)

Sea

“O woman-country! wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead.”

Robert Browning By the Fireside

By the Fireside, vi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Wedding , Heart , Country

“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

Luria, Act v.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Feeling

“Oh never star
Was lost here but it rose afar.”

Robert Browning

Waring, ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Star

“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

Luria, Act v.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , People

“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 The Ring and the Book

Book XII: The Book and the Ring, line 842.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Truth , Art , Way

“In the great right of an excessive wrong.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book III: The Other Half-Rome, line 1055.
Source: The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

“Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book X: The Pope, line 1185.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

“That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 1.
Paracelsus (1835)

God

“Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book III : The Other Half-Rome, line 88.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Love , Women , Men , Christ

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

Robert Browning Men and Women

Men and Women (1855), The last Ride together, vii.

Singing , Joy

“Have they fancies — slow, perchance,
Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance
Until by song each floating part be linked
To each, and all grow palpable, distinct?
He pondered this.”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the Second
Sordello (1840)

Parting

“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

Abt Vogler, ix.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Silence , Evil , Perfection

“He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.”

Robert Browning

Luria, Act ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

War , Peace

“It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus”

Robert Browning

From Cleon; regarding death and afterlife

Imagination , Time , Future

“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

Dis aliter visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Time

“Other heights in other lives, God willing.”

Robert Browning

Stanza xii.
One Word More (1855)

God

“Every joy is gain
And gain is gain, however small.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

Joy

“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

The Inn Album, iv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

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

Robert Browning

The lost Leader, i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning In a Balcony

In a Balcony.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Soul

“Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.”

Robert Browning

Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics: Count Gismond (1842), xix.

World

“The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book X: The Pope, line 590.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Flowers

“God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,—one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!”

Robert Browning

Stanza xvii.
One Word More (1855)

Love , God , World , Soul

“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 Rabbi ben Ezra

Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pain , Learning , Joy , Parting

“Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men.”

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 180.

Men , God

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

Robert Browning

The Inn Album (1875).

Love

“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

Women and Roses.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Women , Age , Dance

“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

Instans Tyrannus, vii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

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

Robert Browning

Youth and Art, xvii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!”

Robert Browning

"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", line 14.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Thinking , Singing

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

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning

"Never the Time and the Place" (1883).

Love , Time

“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.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

"De Gustibus", line 586.
Men and Women (1855)
Variant: 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.

God , Hope

“The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own,
Some stealthy tricks to better beasts unknown
That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts
And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts.”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the First
Sordello (1840)

Hunger , Cats

“Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
It's petals up.”

Robert Browning

"In a Gondola", line 49 (1842).

Flowers , Kiss