Since when was genius found respectable?

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 6, l. 275 (1857).)

All men are possible heroes: every age,
Heroic in proportions, double-faced,
Looks backward and before, expects a morn
And claims an epos. Ay, but every age
Appears to souls who live in it (ask Carlyle)
Most unheroic.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 5 (1857).)

What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art's life,?and where we live, we suffer and toil.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 4, l. 1151-7 (1857).)

And trade is art, and art's philosophy,
In Paris.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 6, l. 96 (1857).)

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat ... or girl?

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 2 (1857).)

Yet how proud we are,
In daring to look down upon ourselves!

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 5 (1857).)

We all have known
Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes;
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state;
Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause;
Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax;
Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy;
Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs;
And damned the general world for standing up.?
Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 4 (1857).)

A woman's always younger than a man
At equal years.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 2 (1857). An explanation follows: ... because she is disallowed Maturing by the outdoor sun and air, And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.)

The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... "curse that stool!"
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 1, l. 456 (1857).)

A woman cannot do the thing she ought,
Which means whatever perfect thing she can,
In life, in art, in science, but she fears
To let the perfect action take her part
And rest there: she must prove what she can do
Before she does it,?prate of woman's rights,
Of woman's mission, woman's function, till
The men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,
"A woman's function plainly is ... to talk."
Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), British poet. Aurora Leigh, bk. 8 (1857).)