Robert Browning

Robert Browning appears in Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith as the source of a single quoted line — “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” — set amid the biography’s account of how young Gordon Hinckley’s mission to England deepened his appreciation for great literature. The surrounding passage describes Hinckley “feasting on English literature and culture” and his conviction that “from the reading of ‘good books’ there comes richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.” Browning is invoked, alongside figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Ruskin in the book’s connection notes, as one of the literary “great of the earth” whose words shaped Hinckley’s aspirational, reach-exceeding outlook.

Context: Robert Browning (1812–1889) was a major Victorian English poet, known for his dramatic monologues; the quoted line is from his poem “Andrea del Sarto.”

Where this appears

• Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — quoted (“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp”) in the account of Hinckley’s love of English literature formed during his mission.