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Quotes from The Ring and the Book — Robert Browning

1812–1889 England

← All quotes by Robert Browning

15 quotes

Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

The Ring and the Book (1868)

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
Life's business being just the terrible choice.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

In the great right of an excessive wrong.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?

The Ring and the Book (1868)

It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,
Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
By fancying the flaw she cannot find.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:
Prime nature with an added artistry —
No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say;
A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.

The Ring and the Book (1868)

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

The Ring and the Book (1868)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Browning (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.