Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)

English Poet , Husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• ...I could count twenty such ...
  Who strive ...
  To paint a little thing like that you smeared
  Carelessly passing with your robes afloat--
  Yet do much less ... --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. ...
  • Source: Andrea del Sarto
    • "Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
    • "Less is more" is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy.

• Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
  Or what's a heaven for?
  • Source: Andrea del Sarto

• The year's at the spring,
  And day's at the morn;
  Morning's at seven;
  The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
  The lark's on the wing;
  The snail's on the thorn;
  God's in His heaven—
  All's right with the world!
  • Pippa Passes

• Truth that's brighter than gem,
  Trust, that's purer than pearl,—
  Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe —all were for me
  In the kiss of one girl.
  • Summum Bonum

• "Deeds let escape are never to be done."
  • Source: Sardello

• 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.

• The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1842

Rabbi Ben Ezra

• 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!

• 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;

• Let us cry, "All good things
  Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

• Be there, for once and all,
  Severed great minds from small,
  Announced to each his station in the Past!

• Was I, the world arraigned,
  Were they, my soul disdained,
  Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
  Now, who shall arbitrate?
  Ten men love what I hate,
  Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
  Ten, who in ears and eyes
  Match me: we all surmise,
  They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

• All instincts immature,
  All purposes unsure,
  That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
  Thoughts hardly to be packed
  Into a narrow act,
  Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
  All I could never be,
  All, men ignored in me,
  This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

• Fool! All that is, at all,
  Lasts ever, past recall;
  Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
  What entered into thee,
  That was, is, and shall be:
  Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

• Look not thou down but up!
  To uses of a cup

• Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
  But I need, now as then,
  Thee, God, who mouldest men;

• So, take, and use thy work:
  Amend what flaws may lurk,
  What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
  My times be in thy hand!
  Perfect the cup as planned!
  Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

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