The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Quotes

“Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not hearts,—so why should I try and speak?”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“The great chasm between the thing I say, & the thing I would say, wd be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“& if some natures have to be refined by the sun, & some by the furnace (the less genial ones--) both means are to be recognized as good; . . . however different in pleasurableness & painfulness, & tho' furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit--.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“My friend is not "mistrustful" of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks & umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for "Colburn's" on her sayings & doings up-stairs--but, spite of that, she does mistrust . . . so mistrust my common sense; nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on asserting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label on, with name, genus & species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I wo'n't, because the first visit of the North wind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether.”
― Robert Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning: Enriched edition. Romantic Correspondence between two great poets of the Victorian era

“When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on & tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if here is not desecration.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--& by position & experience, . . . by having had my nerves shaken to excess, & by leading a life of such seclusion, . . . by these things together & by others besides, I have appeared shy & ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, . . . surely!”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

“While I throw off the ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning