Aurora Leigh Quotes

“Earth's crammed with heaven...
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Books, books, books!
I 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!”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest...”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,-
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“The world of books is still the world.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“She lived, we'll say,
A harmless life, she called a
virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all
(But that she had not lived enough to know)”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“A cheerful genius suits the times, / And all true poets laugh unquenchably / Like Shakespeare and the gods.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“I take her as God made her, and as men Must fail to unmake her, for my honoured wife.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth—
’Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Good aims not always make good books.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Did you think of that? Who burns his viol will not dance, I know. To cymbals, Romney.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Italy/Is one thing, England one.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“[O]ut of books / He taught me all the ignorance of men, / And how God laughs in heaven when any man / Says 'Here I'm learned; this, I understand; / In that, I am never caught at fault or doubt.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“The world of books is still the world, I write,
And both worlds have God’s providence, thank God,
To keep and hearten: with some struggle, indeed,
Among the breakers, some hard swimming through
The deeps - I lost breath in my soul sometimes
And cried, ”God save me if there’s any God,”
But even so, God saved me; and, being dashed
From error on to error, every turn
Still brought me nearer to the central truth.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“My soul is in haste to leap into the sun.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh