1806-1861, British Poet
A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Neighbors]
A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, — prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, ''A woman's function plainly is… to talk.'' Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Women]
A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Age and Aging]
And lips say ''God be pitiful,'' who never said, ''God be praised.''
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Religion]
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Dictionaries]
Books succeed, and lives fail.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Books and Reading]
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, –where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Books and Reading]
But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Children]
Eve is a twofold mystery.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Women]
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Experience]
For 'Tis not in mere death that men die most.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Death and Dying]
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Embarrassment]
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrust the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Prayer]
He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [World]
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Love]
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Hospitals]
Hurt a fly! He would not for the world: he's pitiful to flies even. ''Sing,'' says he, ''and tease me still, if that's your way, poor insect.''
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Nonviolence]
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Grief]
If you desire faith, then you have faith enough.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Faith]
It is not merely the likeness which is precious… but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing… the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think — and it is not at all monstrous in me to say that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – [Photography]