Quotes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach”

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you”

“Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.”

“Earth's crammed with heaven...But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”

“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, -- he wished t...”

“No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.”

“In this abundant earth no doubtIs little room for things worn out:Disdain them, break them, throw them by!And if before the days grew roughWe once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough,I think, we've far...”

“Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.We sit beside the headstone thus,And wish that name were carved for us.The moss reprints more tenderlyThe hard types of the mason's knife,As Heaven's sweet life ...”

“Books, books, books!I had found the secret of a garret roomPiled high with cases in my fathers name;Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some...”

“My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.”

“Our Euripides the human,With his droppings of warm tears,and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.”

“And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that tiesMy hair...now could I but unloose my soul!We are sepulchred alive in this close world,And want more room.”

“God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame.”

“Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.”

“The picture of helpless indolence she calls herselfsublimely helpless and impotentI had done living I thoughtWas ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that th...”

“Better farPursue a frivolous trade by serious means,Than a sublime art frivolously.”

“I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it.”

“We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits...so much help by so much reading. it is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge soul-forward, headlong, i...”

“Good aims not always make good books.”

“It is rather whenWe gloriously forget ourselves, and plungeSoul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth--'Tis then we get the right good from a book.”