Leigh Hunt
Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?Collection: Laughter
Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!Collection: Justice
Night's deepest gloom is but a calm; that soothes the weary mind: The labored days restoring balm; the comfort of mankind.Collection: Night
We lose in depth of expression when we go to inferior animals for comparisons with human beauty. Homer calls Juno ox-eyed; and the epithet suits well with the eyes of that goddess, because she may be supposed, with all her beauty, to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you with a royal indifference.Collection: Eye
Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice, not to the annals of a stage, however dignified.Collection: Acceptance
The two divinest things this world has got,A lovely woman in a rural spot!Collection: Two
There seems a life in hair, though it be dead.Collection: Hair
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.Collection: Tears
Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion.Collection: Fashion
An author is like a baker; it is for him to make the sweets, and others to buy and enjoy them.Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: Believe
It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is goneCollection: Tired
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights, What is 't ye do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles? How do ye vary your vile days and nights? How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites, And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles.Collection: Sunday
An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,-- This art of writing billet-doux-- In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.Collection: Art
The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear, A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves.Collection: Sweet
Those who have lost an infant are never, as it were, without an infant child. Their other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence.Collection: Growing Up
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.Collection: Writing
I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candor, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him, or i anything striking whatsoever. I should say in one word, it was his goodness.Collection: Kindness
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!Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: Beauty
May exalting and humanizing thoughts forever accompany me, making me confident without pride, and modest without servility.Collection: Humility
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?Collection: Occasions
No wonder is greater than any other wonder, and if once explained ceases to be a wonder.Collection: Wonder
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.Collection: Helping Others
For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.Collection: Quality
The loveliest hair is nothing, if the wearer is incapable of a grace.Collection: Hair
Fishes do not roar; they cannot express any sound of suffering; and therefore the angler chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient for him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport that depends for its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of imagination in the sportsman.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Dwelling
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.Collection: Perfect
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.Collection: Summer
Danger for danger's sake is senseless.Collection: Sake
Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.Collection: Morning
The rapturuous, wild, and ineffable pleasure of drinking at somebody else's expenseCollection: Drinking
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.Collection: 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.Collection: Faces
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.Collection: Prayer
This garden has a soul, I know its moods.Collection: Garden
Large eyes were admired in Greece, where they still prevail. They are the finest of all when they have the internal look, which is not common. The stag or antelope eye of the Orientals is beautiful and lamping, but is accused of looking skittish and indifferent. "The epithet of 'stag-eyed,'" says Lady Wortley Montgu, speaking of a Turkish love-song, "pleases me extremely; and I think it a very lively image of the fire and indifference in his mistress' eye.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Eye
The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.Collection: Running
Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Kissing
Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities; the meeting of extremes round a corner.Collection: Wit
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 HuntCollection: Pain
The last excessive feelings of delight are always grave.Collection: Feelings
Christmas is the glorious time of great Too-Much.Collection: Christmas
The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius.Collection: Perfection