55 Best Robert Browning Quotes From The English Poet And Playwright
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Robert Browning was an eminent poet and playwright of the Victorian era.
Born in 1812, Browning gained fame through his particular style of writing which focussed mainly on monologues. According to many, Browning was religious in his early life, however, after reading John Keats, he became an atheist.
Browning was well known for his dramatic monologue as is exclusively depicted in his long poems like 'Andrea Del Satro' or 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'. In this particular form of monologue, the main character of the poem usually speaks with the reader in their own perspective.
His 'Men And Women' poetry collection is considered one of his best. We are sure that our exclusive collection of these Robert Browning quotes will be loved by everyone.
If you like this, check out T.S. Eliot quotes and Keats quotes
Best Robert Browning Poetry Quotes
Enlisted below are some of the best quotes from Robert Browning along with Robert Browning love quotes. These Robert Browning quotes are really moving.
1." Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be---
My whole heart rises up to bless."
- Robert Browning, 'The Last Ride Together'.
2. "Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:"
- Robert Browning, 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'.
3. "If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing god invents."
- Robert Browning.
4. "Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;"
- Robert Browning, 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin'.
5. "Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well."
- Robert Browning, 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxed's Church'.
6. "O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best."
- Robert Browning, 'Love Among The Ruins'.
7. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
- Robert Browning, 'Andrea Del Satro'.
8. "He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him, as one who awakes:
The past was a sleep, and their life began."
- Robert Browning, 'The Statue And The Bust'.
9. "God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!"
- Robert Browning, 'Marching Along'.
10. "I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face."
- Robert Browning, 'Fra Lippo Lippi'.
11. "All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!"
- Robert Browning, 'Andrea Del Satro'.
12. "Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?"
- Robert Browning, 'The Last Ride Together'.
13. "A minute’s success pays the failure of years."
- Robert Browning.
14. "Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character."
- Robert Browning, 'Complete Works Of Robert Browning'.
15. "There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and on the other hand, those who tolerate everything, because they believe nothing."
- Robert Browning.
16. "The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep."
- Robert Browning, 'Meeting At Night'.
Famous Robert Browning Quotes
Here are some Robert Browning famous poems along with Robert Browning quotes about love. The Robert Browning quotes listed here show his skill as a poet.
17. "You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less."
- Robert Browning, 'Bishop Blougram's Apology.
18. "For so shall men remark, in such an act
Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,—
Thy recognition of the use of life;"
- Robert Browning, 'Cleon'.
19. "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."
- Robert Browning, 'An Introduction To The Study Of Robert Browning's Poetry'.
20. "I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way.
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say. "
- Robert Browning.
21. "Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
Cried, and the world with it, 'Ours—the treasure'
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanish’d."
- Robert Browning, 'One More Word'.
22. "Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial."
- Robert Browning, 'Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister'.
23. "I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever."
- Robert Browning.
24. "What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree."
- Robert Browning, 'The Last Ride Together'.
25. "Now the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills."
- Robert Browning, 'Love Among The Ruins'.
26. "There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finish’d!
Take them, Love, the book and me together.
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also."
- Robert Browning, 'One Word More'.
27. "That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"
- Robert Browning, 'Home-Thoughts, From Abroad'.
28. "There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell."
- Robert Browning, 'The Statue And The Bust'.
29. "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;"
- Robert Browning, 'Apparent Failure'.
30. "Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay."
- Robert Browning.
Quotes From Long Poems
In this category you will find the best quotes from the long poems of Robert Browning.
31. "Into the street the Piper stept,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept."
- Robert Browning, 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin'.
32. "So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example—turn your head—
All that's behind us! You don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art."
- Robert Browning, 'Andrea Del Sarto'.
33. "For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
Would we some prize might hold."
- Robert Browning, 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'.
34. "Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burthen)
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant?"
- Robert Browning, 'A Grammarian's Funeral'.
35. "Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt."
- Robert Browning, 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'.
36. "But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?"
- Robert Browning, 'Andrea Del Sarto'.
37. "And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats."
- Robert Browning, 'The Piper Of Hamelin'.
Famous Quotes On Death
Here are some of the iconic death Robert Browning quotes on death.
38. "I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain."
- Robert Browning, 'Porphyria's Lover'.
39. "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."
- Robert Browning, 'After'.
40. "That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands."
- Robert Browning, 'My Last Duchess'.
41. "Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain."
- Robert Browning, 'A Grammarian's Funeral'.
42. "Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;"
- Robert Browning, 'Prospice'.
43. "Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!"
- Robert Browning, 'Porphyria's Lover'.
44. "There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense."
- Robert Browning, 'My Last Duchess'.
45. "I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold."
- Robert Browning, 'After'.
Other Iconic Quotes Of Robert Browning
Enlisted below are some of the other iconic quotes of Robert Browning.
46. "One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome where live."
- Robert Browning, 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxed's Church'.
47. "Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i’ the sun."
- Robert Browning, 'Among The Rocks'.
48. "In a minute can lovers exchange a word?"
- Robert Browning, 'The Statue And The Bust'.
49. "Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")—
To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!"
- Robert Browning, 'Cleon'.
50. "Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
‘Thinketh, He dwelleth i’ the cold o’ the moon.
‘Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;"
- Robert Browning, 'Caliban Upon Setebos'.
51. "I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she"
- Robert Browning.
52. You and I will never read that volume.
Guido Reni like his own eye’s apple
Guarded long the treasure book and lov’d it.
- Robert Browning, 'One More Word'.
53. "In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled."
- Robert Browning, 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin'.
54. "Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers."
- Robert Browning, 'The Piper Of Hamelin'.
55. "Without love, our earth is a tomb."
- Robert Browning.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Robert Browning quotes then why not take a look at Alexander Pope quotes, or Dylan Thomas quotes?
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An aspiring media professional, Srija is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Mass Communication at St. Xavier's University, Kolkata, after completing her degree in journalism. With experience in PR and social media, she has also honed her leadership skills through her participation in a youth parliament. Srija's interests include devouring books, watching movies, and exploring new places through travel.
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