Elizabeth Barrett Browning, (1806-1861) English Poet Quotes

And lips say "God be pitiful," who never said, "God be praised.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it.

And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.

A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; a sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; thou shalt be served thyself by every sense of service which thou renderest.

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.

The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, whose deeds both great and small are close-knit strands of an unbroken thread, where love enables all.

'Twas her thinking of others made you think of her.

The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, to put on when you're weary -- or a stool. To stumble over and vex you..."curse that stool!" Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean and sleep, and dream of something we are not, but would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this... That, after all, we are paid the worth of our work, perhaps.

A woman's always younger than a man of equal years.

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!