Leigh Hunt Quotes

Poetry is the breath of beauty.

The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius.

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands.

We are violets blue, For our sweetness found Careless in the mossy shades, Looking on the ground. Love's dropp'd eyelids and a kiss,
Such our breath and blueness is.

The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.

A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character, he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends, and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.

Colors are the smiles of nature.

Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails,
to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well.

Some tears belong to us because we are unfortunate; others, because we are humane; many, because we are mortal. But most are caused by our being unwise. It is these last only that of necessity produce more.

Cats at firesides live luxuriously and are the picture of comfort.

If you become a Nun, dear,
The bishop Love will be;
The Cupids every one, dear!
Will chant-'We trust in thee!'

Write me as one who loves his fellow men.

A pleasure so exquisite as almost to amount to pain.

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit also we may breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it.

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.

We must regard all matter as an intrusted secret which we believe the person concerned would wish to be considered as such. Nay, further still, we must consider all circumstances as secrets intrusted which would bring scandal upon another if told.

Nature, at all events, humanly speaking, is manifestly very fond of color; for she has made nothing without it. Her skies are blue; her fields, green; her waters vary with her skies; her animals, vegetables, minerals, are all colored. She paints a great any of them in apparently superfluous hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color.

Where the mouth is sweet and the eyes intelligent, there is always the look of beauty, with a right heart.

God made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness.

We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has no the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching a shrieking fish.

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes,-the vulgar.

The golden line is drawn between winter and summer. Behind all is blackness and darkness and dissolution. Before is hope, and soft airs, and the flowers, and the sweet season of hay; and people will cross the fields, reading or walking with one another; and instead of the rain that soaks death into the heart of green things, will be the rain which they drink with delight; and there will be sleep on the grass at midday, and early rising in the morning, and long moonlight evenings.

With spots of sunny openings, and with nooks To lie and read in, sloping into brooks.

There are two worlds: The world that we can measure with line and rule, and the world we feel with our hearts and imaginations.

The only place a new hat can be carried into with safety is a church, for there is plenty of room there.

Mere grimness is as easy as grinning; but it requires something to put a handsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offenses, particularly of blood and wounds ...

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?

Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.

Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities; the meeting of extremes round a corner.

There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.

Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle; so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature,
may almost say, I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.

Danger for danger's sake is senseless.

Mankind are creatures of books, as well as of other circumstances; and such they eternally remain,
proofs, that the race is a noble and believing race, and capable of whatever books can stimulate.

If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find, upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now.

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that is in them, what were we?

Light is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all visible things.

The most tangible of all visible mysteries - fire.

One can love any man that is generous.

A large bare forehead gives a woman a masculine and defying look. The word "effrontery" comes from it. The hair should be brought over such a forehead as vines are trailed over a wall.

Little eyes must be good-tempered or they are ruined. They have no other resource. But this will beautify them enough. They are made for laughing, and, should do their duty.

Table talk, to be perfect, should be sincere without bigotry, differing without discord, sometimes grave, always agreeable, touching on deep points, dwelling most on seasonable ones, and letting everybody speak and be heard.

Green little vaulter, in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole noise that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass.

If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in: Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me!

There is scarcely a single joy or sorrow within the experience of our fellow-creatures which we have not tasted; yet the belief, in the good and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medicine to us in sickness, richness in poverty, and the best part of all that ever delighted us in health and success.

Patience and gentleness is power.

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise.

Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear, A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves ...

We are slumberous poppies,
Lords of Lethe downs,
Some awake and some asleep,
Sleeping in our crowns.
What perchance our dreams may know,
Let our serious may know.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter, Stolen kisses much completer, Stolen looks are nice in chapels, Stolen, stolen be your apples.

The more sensible a woman is, supposing her not to be masculine, the more attractive she is in her proportionate power to entertain.

Tears and sorrows and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life: some for our manifest good, and ail, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed;
for our final and greatest good.

There seems a life in hair, though it be dead.

The most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every day moments of existence. In a particular and attaching sense, they are those that can partake our pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and most devoted manner. Beauty is little without this; with it she is triumphant.

When Goethe says that in every human condition foes lie in wait for us, "invincible only by cheerfulness and equanimity," he does not mean that we can at all times be really cheerful, or at a moment's notice; but that the endeavor to look at the better side of things will produce the habit, and that this habit is the surest safeguard against the danger of sudden is evils.

I am persuaded there is no such thing after all as a perfect enjoyment of solitude; for the more delicious the solitude the more one wants a companion.

Central depth of purple, Leaves more bright than rose, Who shall tell what brightest thought Out of darkness grows? Who, through what funereal pain, Souls to love and peace attain? - Leigh Hunt (James Henry Leigh Hunt

I entrench myself in books equally against sorrow and the weather.

Happy opinions are the wine of the heart.

Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.

Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Occupation is the necessary basis of all enjoyment.

Music is the medicine of the breaking heart.

A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Isaac Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish.

Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.

The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.