"Robert Browning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may not be irrelevant to mention that our late poet, Robert Browning, besought me—both in conversation, and by letter—to restore this "discarded" picture, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man's utterance to the speech of gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became in Robert Browning's hands a grotesque, misshapen thing, which at times made him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the strings ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... with preparations for it all through the summer of 1882, which he spent at what was now to be for many years his favorite summer resort, Gossensass in the Tyrol, a place which is consecrated to the memory of Ibsen in the way that Pornic belongs to Robert Browning and the Bel Alp to Tyndall, holiday homes in foreign countries, dedicated to blissful work without disturbance. Here, at a spot now officially named the "Ibsenplatz," he composed The Enemy of the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... of Tennyson, the "De Profundis" of Mrs. Browning, and the rich and glorious music of Robert Browning could have come only from souls which had been profoundly moved by grief and pain. All men listen most attentively to those who have gone farthest ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... of continuous honor and entertainment. If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was little less than royalty now. His rooms at the Langham were like a court. Miss Spaulding (now Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) remembers that Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir Charles Dilke (then at the height of his fame) were among those that called to pay their respects. In ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whose precocity was marked, we find the most noteworthy to be Robert Browning, whose first poetic effusion is ascribed to his fourth year. It is now known, however, that poetry is much more common among children than was at first supposed, and early compositions are not to be ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Burke's Peerage; but they knew nothing else. In a group of intelligent persons of this degree, question was raised, once upon a time, of two English poets; but not one of the group had heard of either; the poets were Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. This may seem merely absurd or apocryphal; but consider the terrible power of concentration which it implies! And consider the effect which the impact against such a clay wall must make upon a man and an American ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Blunt, then the handsomest of our younger English diplomatists, a breeder of Arab horses, and also the author of love poems which deserve beyond all comparison more attention than they have yet received. Others again were Robert Browning, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Swinburne. These I met either at Oxford or in London, but to those whom I came to know through the William Froudes at Torquay may be added Aubrey de Vere, the Catholic poet of Ireland, Lord Houghton, Lord Lytton, the novelist, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... Jessie Cumming and Mary Spence shook hands and formed a friendship over Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." My brother-in-law (W. J. Wren) had fine literary tastes, especially for poetry. The first gift to his wife after marriage was Elizabeth Browning's poems in two volumes and Robert Browning's "Plays and Dramatic Lyrics" in two volumes, and Mary and I delighted in them all. In those days I considered my sister Mary and my sister-in-law the most brilliant conversationalists I knew. My elder sister, Mrs. ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... was the third of that name. The first Robert Browning, a man of energy and ability, held an important post in the Bank of England. His wife, Margaret Tittle, was a Creole from the West Indies, and at the time of her marriage her property was still in the estates owned by her father near St. Kitts. When their son, the second Robert, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine, to fix me to the place. That way he used, ... Alas! one hour's disgrace!" Robert Browning. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... stretches that lead to the summit, covered with the coarse but aromatic vegetation that clothes the dry limestone wastes of the south. How truly marvellous is the description of these wind-swept, weed-grown solitudes that Robert Browning presents to us in what is perhaps the most truly Italian in feeling of all his poems, "The Englishman in Italy!" For here with the rich imagination, worthy of some of Shelley's finest flights, is mingled an accurate ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... these barbaric stages passed away, and we discover in the Teutonic ancestors of Britain that monogamy which was Nature's ideal from the first. Just as man was potential in the primordial slime, so was the marriage of Robert Browning a possibility in the earliest union of scarce-emancipated man and woman. What the institution could become, what it has become, shows what was the intent of Nature from the beginning. In the nobler days of Rome, under the republic and early empire, the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... New Court, when the time came for the son's first play to be produced at Covent Garden. He was a Dissenter, and for this reason his son's education did not proceed on the ordinary English lines. The training which Robert Browning received was more individual, and his reading was wider and less accurate, than would have been the case had he gone to Eton or Winchester. Thus, though to the end he read Greek with the deepest interest, he never could ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... lives in art is the love of Penelope and Antigone, of Cordelia and Desdemona and Imogen, of Enid, of Mrs. Browning, among women; and among men, the love of Dante, of Keats, of the lover of Maud, of Pere Goriot, of Robert Browning. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... old songs, Landor has laid his offering upon their neglected altar. I shall not forget that evening at Casa Guidi—I can forget no evening passed there—when, just as the tea was being placed upon the table. Robert Browning turned to Landor, who was that night's honored guest, gracefully thanked him for his defence of old songs, and, opening the "Last Fruit," read in his clear, manly voice the following passages from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... translated portions of six of the plays in his 'Specimens of Greek Tragedy.' Many translations of the 'Agamemnon' have been made, among others by Milman, by Symmons, by Lord Carnarvon, and by Fitzgerald. Robert Browning also translated the play, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to discover Robert Browning's philosophy of life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browning is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finally judged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent to which his writings ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the start I gave when, on reading some old book about India, I came across an after-dinner jest of Henry Martyn's. The thought of Henry Martyn laughing over the walnuts and the wine was almost, as Robert Browning's unknown painter says, "too wildly dear;" and to this day I cannot help thinking that there must be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the appearance of my story of David Gray in the Cornhill that I first met, at the Priory, North Bank, with Robert Browning. It was an odd and representative gathering of men, only one lady being present, the hostess, George Eliot. I was never much of a hero-worshipper; but I had long been a sympathetic Browningite, and I well ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... may be, our greatest poets have not hesitated to use their highest powers to impress it upon us. Robert Browning put this truth into the mouth of Andrea del Sarto in one of the strongest lines in all ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... Mrs. Sutherland-Orr had access to these letters for her biography of Robert Browning, and quotes several passages from them. With this exception, none of the letters have been published previously; and the published letters of Miss Barrett to Mr. R.H. Horne have not been drawn ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... sacred emblems of Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently chanted creeds became the patter of the boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of delightful folk as at its Private Views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, doffing his hat with a courtly sweep to more than one Duchess. There, too, was Theo Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles Colnaghi, the hero of a hundred tea-fights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, and many another ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... seems to me to attack the central difficulty in understanding and reading Robert Browning's poetry.... It opens a wide door to the greatest poetry of the modern age.—The Rev. John R. Gow, President of the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... parents who lack health, money, brains, and character; and in many cases the environment is no better than the ancestry. "God plants us where we grow," said Pompilia, and we can not save the rose by placing it on the tree-top. Robert Browning, who was perhaps the happiest man in the nineteenth century, was particularly fortunate in his advent. Of the entire population of the planet in the year of grace 1812, he could hardly have selected a better father and mother than were chosen for him; and the place of ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... from a literary standpoint is second only to that of Elizabeth in brilliancy. The Victorian Age is usually applied to the whole century, during the better part of which Victoria reigned. The literature of this age is rich with the writings of Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, Edwin Arnold, Jean Ingelow, Owen Meredith, Arthur Hugh Clough, Adelaide Procter, and ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... As we know, she was kind to everybody. She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in fashionable restaurants. Their range of discussion included babies and Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee. It would be interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever to depart. The time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of a Faubourg audience. Perhaps he is right. I am not at all afraid of the play, which is very beautiful,—a blank-verse comedy full of truth and feeling. I don't know if you know Henry Chorley. He is the friend of Robert Browning, and the especial favorite of John Kenyon, and has always been a sort of adopted nephew of mine. Poor Mrs. Hemans loved him well; so did a very different person, Lady Blessington,—so that altogether you may fancy him a very ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... dinner to-day, at half past three, there was a ring at the door, and a minute after our servant brought a card. It was Mr. Robert Browning's, and on it was written in pencil an invitation for us to go to see them this evening. He had left the card and gone away; but very soon the bell rang again, and he had come back, having forgotten to give his address. This time he came in; ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... oblivion—that kiss which even the lowliest man and woman receive once in their lives as a benediction from Heaven. So many people imagine that they have found the Ideal Friend when they meet someone with an equal admiration for the poems of Robert Browning; or the Russian Ballet, or one who places the music of Debussy above the music of Wagner. But, I fear, they are often disappointed. For the longer I live, the more convinced I become that Love and Friendship ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... in, and a sympathy for, the thought-visions of men like Charles Kingsley, Marcus Aurelius, Whit tier, Montaigne, Paul of Tarsus, Robert Browning, Pythagoras, Channing, Milton, Sophocles, Swedenborg, Thoreau, Francis of Assisi, Wordsworth, Voltaire, Garrison, Plutarch, Ruskin, Ariosto, and all kindred spirits and souls of great measure, from David down to Rupert Brooke,—if ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... came to him days of anguish, and nights of grim, grinding pain. He paced the echoing halls, as did Robert Browning after the death of Elizabeth Barrett when he cried aloud, "I want her! I want her!". The cold gray light of morning came creeping into the sky. Rembrandt was fevered, restless, sleepless. He sat by the window and watched the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me." ROBERT BROWNING. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... in literature, art, and music; born May 7th, 1812; origin of the Browning family; assertions as to its Semitic connection apparently groundless; the poet a putative descendant of the Captain Micaiah Browning mentioned by Macaulay; Robert Browning's mother of Scottish and German origin; his father a man of exceptional powers, artist, poet, critic, student; Mr. Browning's opinion of his son's writings; the home in Camberwell; Robert Browning's childhood; concerning ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... old tale of adventure, the incident occurring in the days of chivalry. But it is of sufficient dramatic interest to cause Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Robert Browning each to use it also as the subject for a poem. As you read it try to picture the scene as it is developed line ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Robert Browning's penultimate book, that "Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day" which fell somewhat coldly upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served only as the discordant prelude to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton |
