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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 quotes205 likes

Robert Browning Quotes

“over zealous in the feat
And stumbling on a peril unaware.
Was captive, "trammelled in his proper snare,"
They phrase it, "taken by his own intrigue"”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the First
Sordello (1840)

“For I say this is death and the sole death,—
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.”

Robert Browning

A Death in the Desert (1864)

“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

"Saul", vi.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

“I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 1.
Paracelsus (1835)

“[…]his back is fairly turned?
The pair of goodly palaces are burned,
The gardens ravaged, and your Guelf is drunk
A week with joy; the next, his laughter sunk
In sobs of blood, for he found, some strange way,
Old Salinguerra back again; I say
Old Salinguerra in the town once more
Uprooting, overturning, flame before
Blood fetlock-high beneath him; Azzo fled;
Who scaped the carnage followed; then the dead
Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne.
He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone.
Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce;
Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce.”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the First
Sordello (1840)

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

Robert Browning

Why I am a Liberal.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.”

Robert Browning Cleon

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

“The body sprang
At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!”

Robert Browning

A Death in the Desert (1864)

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

Robert Browning Colombe's Birthday

Valence, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)

“Lofty designs must close in like effects.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

"A Grammarian's Funeral".
Men and Women (1855)

“What's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.”

Robert Browning

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

“Truth is within ourselves.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 1.
Paracelsus (1835)

“Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
Where is the blot?”

Robert Browning

Wanting—is what?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning

Childe Roland to the dark Tower came, xxxiii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning

Charles Avison.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 2.
Paracelsus (1835)

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

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book XII: The Book and the Ring, line 873.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

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

Robert Browning

"The Last Ride Together", line 67 (1859).

“The peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

“Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.”

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 157.

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

Robert Browning

The Flight of the Duchess, xvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning

"Saul", xviii.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

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

Robert Browning Men and Women

"Fra Lippo Lippi", line 224.
Men and Women (1855)

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

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 175.

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

Robert Browning

La Saisiaz.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

Sometimes ascribed to Robert Browning, this is in fact a misquotation from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): "They [i.e. ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top".
Misattributed

“The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
To their first fault, and withered in their pride.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

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

Robert Browning Cleon

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

“That great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.”

Robert Browning By the Fireside

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

“The moment eternal — just that and no more —
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!”

Robert Browning

"Now", line 12 (1889).

“The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!”

Robert Browning

A Death in the Desert (1864)

“Sky—what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!”

Robert Browning

The two Poets of Croisic.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this ye call
A "great event" should come to pass
From that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!”

Robert Browning Pippa Passes

Introduction.
Pippa Passes (1841)

“For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.”

Robert Browning

A Death in the Desert (1864)

“What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.”

Robert Browning

A Death in the Desert (1864)

“Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

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

Robert Browning

A Soul's Tragedy (1846), Act ii.

“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

The Statue and the Bust.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.”

Robert Browning

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

“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 Memorabilia

Memorabilia, i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

Robert Browning Men and Women

"A Toccata of Galuppi's", line 42.
Men and Women (1855)

“Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man as yet.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 5.
Paracelsus (1835)

“Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.”

Robert Browning

Two in the Campagna, xii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book VII: Pompilia, line 357.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

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

Robert Browning

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

“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

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

“So may a glory from defect arise.”

Robert Browning

Deaf and Dumb.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”

Robert Browning

Asolando, "Epilogue" (1889).

“All service ranks the same with God,—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.”

Robert Browning Pippa Passes

Part IV.
Pippa Passes (1841)