Robert Browning quotes
1812 – 1889 · Victorian Britain, 19th century · Poet and playwright
About Robert Browning
Born in Camberwell in 1812 and dying in Venice in 1889, Browning became a leading Victorian poet. He perfected the dramatic monologue to probe characters' inner lives, exploring themes of love, ambition, failure and self-knowledge. His work combines moral intensity with a psychological realism often described as a form of Victorian humanism.
Works: The Last Ride Together (1855); collections of dramatic monologues
Quotes
“Fail I alone, in words and deeds? / Why, all men strive and who succeeds?”
Source: The Last Ride Together, 1855 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line is a direct verse from Robert Browning’s poem The Last Ride Together (1855).
Browning turns a lover’s private failure into a wider truth: everyone strives, yet success is never guaranteed. In the dramatic lyric “The Last Ride Together” (1855) the speaker’s questions widen a personal loss into a shared human condition, finding consolation in the dignity of trying.