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Love Quote by Robert Browning

"Take away love and our earth is a tomb"

About this Quote

Browning isn’t offering a Valentine; he’s issuing an existential threat in twelve words. “Take away love” lands like a thought experiment with teeth: remove the one force that animates human meaning and the planet doesn’t simply get sadder, it becomes functionally dead. The pivot from “earth” to “tomb” is the trick. Earth is usually cradle, home, inheritance; “tomb” turns it into a sealed container, a place defined by absence and after-the-factness. It’s not apocalypse-as-explosion, it’s apocalypse-as-emptiness.

The intent is less to praise romance than to argue for love as a metaphysical engine. Browning, a Victorian poet steeped in debates about faith, doubt, and the mechanizing pressures of modern life, frames love as the antidote to a world increasingly explainable and increasingly cold. “Our earth” makes the claim communal and possessive: love isn’t a private luxury, it’s public infrastructure. Without it, we still have society, work, even religion, but they read like rituals performed over a corpse.

Subtextually, the line smuggles in a moral demand. If lovelessness equals entombment, then withholding love (in any form: compassion, intimacy, charity) isn’t neutrality; it’s a kind of spiritual vandalism. Browning’s genius is how quickly the metaphor scales: it can describe a marriage, a city, an era. The poem’s power comes from refusing sentimentality while still insisting that emotion is not decoration - it’s the atmosphere that keeps “earth” from becoming merely a well-made grave.

Quote Details

TopicLove
Source
Verified source: The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning (Robert Browning, 1897)ID: FY37gkFMHTEC
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
Robert Browning. With one hand ( " Look you , now , " as who should say ) And his weapon in the other , yet unwiped ... Take away love , and our earth is a tomb ! Flower o ' the quince , I let Lisa go , and what good in life since ...
Other candidates (1)
Robert Browning (Robert Browning) compilation95.6%
heaven for andrea del sarto line 98 take away love and our earth is a tomb fra
FeaturedThis quote was our Quote of the Day on July 23, 2025
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Browning, Robert. (2026, January 11). Take away love and our earth is a tomb. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/take-away-love-and-our-earth-is-a-tomb-11570/

Chicago Style
Browning, Robert. "Take away love and our earth is a tomb." FixQuotes. January 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/take-away-love-and-our-earth-is-a-tomb-11570/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Take away love and our earth is a tomb." FixQuotes, 11 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/take-away-love-and-our-earth-is-a-tomb-11570/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Robert Browning

Robert Browning (May 7, 1812 - December 12, 1889) was a Poet from England.

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