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The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Beauty

More quotes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!

Poems (1844)

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only.

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.

Poems (1844)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

All Elizabeth Barrett Browning quotes →

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.