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Who really said it

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806–1861 · English Victorian poet
Verified Free to reuse

This is the verbatim opening line of Sonnet 43 (“XLIII”) of Sonnets from the Portuguese, the 44-sonnet love sequence Browning first published in 1850. The wording is exact and the source is firmly documented.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43, "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (1850)

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Provenance

The source

Work
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 43 (“XLIII”)
Author
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
First published
1850
Form
Petrarchan sonnet; 14 lines of iambic pentameter

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

The opening quatrain of Sonnet 43; the question of the first line is answered across the remaining thirteen.

Read Sonnet 43 at the Poetry Foundation

How we verified this

  • The Poetry Foundation prints the sonnet with this exact opening line.
  • The Academy of American Poets reproduces the same line verbatim and flags the text as public domain.
  • Wikipedia records that the 44-sonnet sequence was first published in 1850 and calls this line “one of the most famous in English poetry.”
Public domain

Sonnets from the Portuguese was first published in 1850, long before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff, so both the collection and this line are in the public domain.

Fact-check

The mix-up

The attribution to Elizabeth Barrett Browning is correct. The common error is confusing who wrote it — the archaic “thee” and the sonnet form lead many to assume it is Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare Common confusion

Because the line is a sonnet opening full of “thee,” it is often loosely credited to Shakespeare. It is not his: it is Sonnet 43 of Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, written some two and a half centuries after Shakespeare's sonnets.

The words are genuinely Elizabeth Barrett Browning's, from Sonnet 43 of Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).

Context

Why it endures

Sonnet 43 opens with a question and spends its remaining thirteen lines answering it, cataloguing the “ways” of love from everyday need to religious devotion and beyond death. That structure — a plain question met by an overflowing answer — is much of why the line is quoted at weddings and on Valentine cards to this day.

Browning wrote the sequence during her courtship with Robert Browning and, reluctant to expose something so personal, presented the poems as though translated from Portuguese. The disguise gave the collection its title and a measure of privacy for verse that was, in fact, entirely her own.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Sonnet 43 (full text)poetryfoundation.org

The complete sonnet with this opening line, at the Poetry Foundation.
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)poets.org

Academy of American Poets text, marked public domain.
Sonnets from the Portugueseen.wikipedia.org

Background and 1850 publication history of the sonnet sequence.
Sonnets from the Portuguesebritannica.com

Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the collection and its composition.
Elizabeth Barrett Browningpoetryfoundation.org

Biography of the poet and overview of her work.

The true author

About Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1806–1861 · English Victorian poet

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most celebrated English poets of the Victorian era, admired in her lifetime on both sides of the Atlantic. The 44 sonnets of Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) trace the private courtship that led to her marriage to fellow poet Robert Browning; she framed the deeply personal sequence as if it were translated verse to soften its intimacy. Sonnet 43 became her most quoted work and one of the best-loved love poems in the language.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43,” in Sonnets from the Portuguese (first published 1850).

MLA (9th ed.)

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. “Sonnet 43.” Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.

APA (7th ed.)

Browning, E. B. (1850). Sonnet 43. In Sonnets from the Portuguese.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways

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