Quotes
Quotes - Browning
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
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!
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.
Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.
Just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!
Oh never star
Was lost here but it rose afar.
Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.
When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?
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 unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
Lofty designs must close in like effects.
The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost
Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
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.
They are perfect; how else?--they shall never change:
We are faulty; why not?--we have time in store.
What's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
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's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.
God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
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!
'T is not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do.
O woman-country!wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead.
That great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar.
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
