Robert Browning nejznámější citáty
Robert Browning: Citáty o lásce
Robert Browning: Citáty anglicky
“O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire”
Book I : The Ring and the Book <!-- line 1391 -->.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Kontext: 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!
“Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy”
Book the Third
Sordello (1840)
“Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.”
"At the 'Mermaid'"(1876) <!-- line 72 - 80 -->
Kontext: Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I save and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
Book X: The Pope.<!-- line 1235 -->
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
“Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats”
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, line 10 (1842).
Kontext: Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
“Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"”
Zdroj: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 70.
“Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”
Zdroj: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 12.
Kontext: Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.
"Andrea del Sarto", line 70
"Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
Men and Women (1855)
Kontext: I do what many dream of, all their lives,
— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat —
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
“Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.”
Zdroj: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 12.
Kontext: Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.
“I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.”
"At the 'Mermaid'"(1876).
Kontext: I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
"Andrea del Sarto", line 98.
Men and Women (1855)
Zdroj: Men and Women and Other Poems
Zdroj: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 1.
Kontext: Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
As quoted in Love's Way (1918) by Orison Swett Marden, p. 175; no earlier citation of this to Browning has been located.
Disputed
Varianta: Love is energy of life.
“Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!”
"Fra Lippo Lippi, line 54.
Men and Women (1855)
Varianta: Without love, our earth is a tomb
“When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.”
"Bishop Blougram's Apology".
Men and Women (1855)
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character”
Zdroj: Browning's Paracelsus: Being the Text of Browning's Poem
“Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.”
Zdroj: A Death in the Desert (1864), Line 59.
Zdroj: Dramatic Lyrics
"Bishop Blougram’s Apology", line 395; cited by Graham Greene as the epigraph he would choose for his novels.
Men and Women (1855)
“Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy".”
"De Gustibus", ii.
Men and Women (1855)
Kontext: Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais):
"Open my heart, and you will see
Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'"
“If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents.”
"Fra Lippo Lippi", line 217.
Men and Women (1855)
Zdroj: The Poems of Robert Browning
