Robert Browning citations

Page 3

“But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.”

“The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.”

“Our aspirations are our possibilities.”

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

“A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.”

“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.”

“I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.”

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

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

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

“Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"”

“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:”

“Rafael made a century of sonnets.”

“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!”

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

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

“And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,
Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone,
While Northern thought is slow and durable.”

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

“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.”

“It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.”

“A minute's success pays the failure of years.”

“In the great right of an excessive wrong.”

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

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

“When is man strong until he feels alone?”

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

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

“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.”