143 Inspiring Quotes by Robert Browning

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

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.

How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.

Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.

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.

What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.

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

Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!

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

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!

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

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.

But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away.

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

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 best is yet to be.

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.

Needs there groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy?

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

Sorrow, the heart must bear,
Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there.
Many a circumstance, at least,
Touches the very breast.
For those
Whom any sent away, -- he knows:
And in the live man's stead,
Armor and ashes reach
The house of each.

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way. But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me!

Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true.

Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed It's petals up.

Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.

To me at least was never evening yet, but seemed far beautifuller than its day.

I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever.

In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat -- somewhat, too, the power --
And thus we half-men struggle.

Oh never star Was lost here but it rose afar.

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

Who knows most, doubts most.

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black.

How sad and bad and mad it was -- but then, how it was sweet.

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up and all the cottage warm;.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?

The candid incline to surmise of late that the Christian faith proves false.

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire.

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

Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

Grow old with me. the best is yet to be. the last of life for which the first was made.

To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning to your life.

Oh the wild joys of living! The leaping from rock to rock ... the cool silver shock of the plunge in a pool's living waters.

Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies.

There's a new tribunal now higher than God's -The educated man's!

So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!

Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet. From the ripple to run over in its mirth.

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

O never star Was lost; here We all aspire to heaven and there is heaven Above us. If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge some day.

Have you found your life distasteful?

My life did, and does, smack sweet.

Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?

Mine I saved and hold complete.

Do your joys with age diminish?

When mine fail me, I'll complain.

Must in death your daylight finish?

My sun sets to rise again.

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.

He guides me and the bird. In His good time!

I felt a strange delight in causing my decay.

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.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest!

I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.

Since there my past life lies, why alter it?

Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.

How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life's November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

The trouble that most of us find with the modern matched sets of clubs is that they don't really seem to know any more about the game than the old ones did.

From the sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.

Twere too absurd to slight For the hereafter the todays delight!

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

I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.

There are three ways of learning golf: by study, which is the most wearisome; by imitation, which is the most fallacious; and by experience, which is the most bitter.

The best things in life can never be kept;

They must be given away.

A Smile, a Kiss, and Love
If you are asking if I'd hurt you, the answer is never.

If you are asking if i love u,the answer is forever.

If you are asking if i want u,the answer is i do.

If you are asking what i value most, the answer is YOU
Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.

Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.

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

All poetry is putting the infinite within the finite.

Without love, our earth is a tomb.

Go in thy native innocence, rely On what thou hast of virtue, summon all, For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

Who knows but the world may end tonight.

Generations pass while some tree stands, and old families last not three oaks.

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.

The great beacon light God sets in all, the conscience of each bosom.

Strike when thou wilt, the hour of rest, but let my last days be my best.

I have lived, And seen God's hand thro a life time, And all was for the best.

You never know what life means till you die; even throughout life, tis death that makes life live.

Poetry, like love, is something we never truly say goodbye to.

Hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
And great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.

I want to know a butcher paints, A baker rhymes for his pursuit, Candlestick-maker much acquaints His soul with song, or, haply mute, Blows out his brains upon the flute.

Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her- Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her.

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.

For thence a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, -- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

Never brag, never bluster, never blush.

A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: See all, nor be afraid!

I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

It's wiser being good than bad; It's safer being meek than fierce: It's fitter being sane than mad.

God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that.

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

A man in armour is his armour's slave.

Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished that the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, But the main thing is, does it hold good measure Heaven soon sets right all other matters!

One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'.

T'was a thief said the last kind word to Christ. Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

Outside are the storms and strangers: we -- Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she, -- I and she!

It 's wiser being good than bad; It 's safer being meek than fierce; It 's fitter being sane than mad. My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That after Last returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched.

For life, with all its yields of joy and woe Is just a chance o' the prize of learning love.

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

The power of the night, the press of the storm, the post of the foe; where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, yet, the strong man must go.

Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.

Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais): "Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it 'Italy.'

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here-should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplext Seeking shall find Him.

Hatred and cark and care, what place have they In yon blue liberality of heaven?.

Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage.

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

Of pain, darkness and cold.

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;....and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.

The devil, that old stager, who leads downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware.

Tis looking downward makes one dizzy.

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

Would you have your songs endure? Build on the human heart.

'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls.

Talent should minister to genius.

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there..

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past.

He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop.

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.

Where the apple reddens never pry -- lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.

Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.

June was not over Though past the fall, And the best of her roses Had yet to blow, When a man I know (But shall not discover, Since ears are dull, And time discloses) Turned him and said with a man's true air, Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as 'twere,-- 'If I tire of your June, will she greatly care?'

It was roses, roses all the way.

The grand perhaps! We look on helplessly, there the old misgivings, crooked questions are.

Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous for a plate of turtle green and glutinous.