Quote#Love
What's the best thing in the world?
Quote byElizabeth Barrett Browning · 1806–1861
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Last Poems (1862), "The Best Thing in the World".
English (original)
What's the best thing in the world? June-rose, by May-dew impearl’d; Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-deck’d and curl’d Till its pride is over-plain; Light, that never makes you wink; Memory, that gives no pain; Love, when, so, you’re loved again. What’s the best thing in the world? —Something out of it, I think.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
More from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy dead in silence like to death; Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe, Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet—
By thunders of white silence.
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving;
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.