Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a renowned Victorian poet, known for her love sonnets and poetry addressing social issues.
Born in 1806 in County Durham, England, she enjoyed a comfortable childhood due to her family’s wealth from Jamaican plantations.
Despite developing a painful spinal disease at 15, she found solace in literature and expressed strong social views in her works.
After her mother’s death and her father’s financial troubles, she continued writing, gained recognition and eventually fell in love with and eloped with fellow writer Robert Browning.
Living in Italy, her work included critiques of slavery, advocacy for Italian reunification and the famous “Sonnets from the Portuguese”.
Despite enduring ill-health, her extensive literature inspired many and elevated the status of female discourse.
She passed away in 1861, leaving a lasting legacy.
Here is a collection of the best quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Best Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Of writing many books there is no end. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Capacity for joy Admits temptation. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Large, musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
He who breathes deepest lives most. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I should not dare to call my soul my own. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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 it. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
If you desire faith, then you have faith enough. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest… ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Famous Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
World’s use is cold, world’s love is vain, world’s cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Whoever lives true life, will love true love. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandise, I barter for curl upon that mart. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart; We press too close in church and mart To keep a dream or grave apart. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
A child’s kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Inspiring Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe, – but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Never say No when the world says Aye. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
He said true things, but called them by wrong names. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Earth’s crammed with Heaven. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Light tomorrow with today! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
My future will not copy my fair past, I wrote that once. And, thinking at my side my ministering life-angel justified the word by his appealing look upcast to the white throne of God. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Top Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
But the child’s sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Gaze up at the stars knowing that I see the same sky and wish the same sweet dreams. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
You were made perfectly to be loved – and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love’s sake only. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Popular Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Who so loves believes the impossible. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Two human loves make one divine. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
We have hearts within, Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
He lives most life whoever breathes most air. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
There’s nothing great Nor small, has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin’s bell. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Books succeed; and lives fail. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love you for the part of me that you bring out. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The world’s male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Yet half the beast is the great god Pan, To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain – For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Great Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it’s little. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
My sun sets to rise again. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Children use the fist until they are of age to use the brain. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And lips say God be pitiful, who never said, God be praised. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
True knowledge comes only through suffering. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
A woman’s always younger than a man at equal years. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Love that endures, from life that disappears! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I heard an angel speak last night And he said, ‘Write!’ ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Wise Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Silence is the best response to a fool… ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The devil’s most devilish when respectable. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Get leave to work In this world, – ’tis the best you get at all. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god’s throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
All actual heroes are essential men And all men possible heroes. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud – I build it bright to see, – I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me – wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
You may write twenty lines one day – or even three like Euripides in three days – and a hundred lines in one more day – and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Powerful Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
And lilies are still lilies, pulled By smutty hands, though spotted from their white. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Or from Browning some Pomegranate, which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Definition of Love: A score of zero in tennis. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Wall must get the weather stain Before they grow the ivy. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused the trouble in the garden of Eden. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Art is much, but love is more. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality? ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
So mothers have God’s license to be missed. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
You’re something between a dream and a miracle. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
So these were the 97 top Elizabeth Barrett Browning quotes and sayings on love, romance and feminism.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Elbert Hubbard quotes and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross quotes.
