“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 2, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Was never evening yet But seemed far beautifuller than its day." by Robert Browning?
Robert Browning photo
Robert Browning 179
English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era 1812–1889

Related quotes

“The scene was more beautiful far to the eye
Than if day in its pride had arrayed it.”

Paul Moon James (1780–1854) British poet and banker

The Beacon, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Things are not always as they seem. Sometimes, even most times, they are far stranger than you’d imagine, and most likely more perverse than you’d care to consider.”

K. A. Bedford (1963) Australian writer

Source: Paradox Resolution (2012), Chapter 8 (p. 61)

Jonathan Edwards photo

“It is evident from the Scripture, that there is yet remaining a great advancement of the interest of religion and the kingdom of Christ in this world, by an abundant outpouring of the Spirit of God, far greater and more extensive than ever yet has been. It is certain, that many things, which are spoken concerning a glorious time of the church’s enlargement and prosperity in the latter days, have never yet been fulfilled.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

An Humble Attempt To Promote Explicit Agreement And Visible Union Of God’s People In Extraordinary Prayer For The Revival Of Religion And The Advancement Of Christ’s Kingdom On Earth from Edwards, Jonathan, The works of Jonathan Edwards (Vol. 2, p. 278). Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1974.

Confucius photo

“The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“No recognised school of sculpture had animated this terrible object, yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

“The U. S. was never stronger, North Korea never weaker than in 1994, yet even then the fear of an artillery attack on Seoul prevented an air-strike on Yongbyeon. You can put it another way and say that the very success of the nuclear program, the fact that it has gone this far, proves that it was never necessary for North Korea’s security in the first place.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Thomas Hardy photo

“Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 41

Adlai Stevenson photo

“The Republican party makes even its young men seem old; the Democratic Party makes even its old men seem young.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Comparing Richard Nixon to Alben Barkley during the 1952 presidential race, as quoted in Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait (1959) by Earl Mazo, Chapter 7

Hermann Hesse photo

“All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious — but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.

Virginia Woolf photo

“Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

Related topics