“In proportion as men were all to resemble each other, and to have faces and manners in common, their self-love was not to be disturbed by any thing in the shape of individuality. A writer might be na tural, but he was to be natural only as far as their sense of nature would go, and this was not a great way. Besides, even when he was natural, he hardly dared to be so in language as well as idea ;- there gradually came up a kind of dress, in which a man’s mind, as well as body, was to clothe itself.”
Source: The Round Table, Vol. 1: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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 gone”
Source: The Indicator
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Source: The poetical works of Leigh Hunt
“Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities; the meeting of extremes round a corner.”
Source: Leigh Hunt's Works
“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”
“Colors are the smiles of Nature. When they are extremely smiling, and break forth into other beauty besides, they are her laughs.”
Source: The Seer
“The two divinest things this world has got,A lovely woman in a rural spot!”
“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.”
Source: Leigh Hunt's London Journal
“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.”
Source: The poetical works of Leigh Hunt, revised by himself and ed. with an intr. by S.A. Lee
“The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear, A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves.”
Source: Selected Writings
“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.”
Source: Works
“When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“Danger for danger's sake is senseless.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“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.”
“The more sensible a woman is, supposing her not to be masculine, the more attractive she is in her proportionate power to entertain.”
Source: The Seer: Or, Common-places Refreshed
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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 evils.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius.”
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (Illustrated)
“The last excessive feelings of delight are always grave.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“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.”
“One can love any man that is generous.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“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.”
Source: Leigh Hunt's Works
“The loveliest hair is nothing, if the wearer is incapable of a grace.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“There seems a life in hair, though it be dead.”
“May exalting and humanizing thoughts forever accompany me, making me confident without pride, and modest without servility.”
Source: The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty
“Improvement is nature.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?”
“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.”
Source: The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty
“Light is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all visible things.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise.”
Source: Leigh Hunt's Works: Selections from the English poets
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Leigh Hunt's London Journal
“Where the mouth is sweet and the eyes intelligent, there is always the look of beauty, with a right heart.”
“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.”
Source: A Book for a Corner
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs, from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs, from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“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.”
“Happy opinions are the wine of the heart.”
Source: A Day by the Fire: And Other Papers, Hitherto Uncollected
“Poetry is the breath of beauty.”
Source: Fiction and matter of fact. Inside of an omnibus. Day of the disasters of Carlington Blundell. Visit to the zoological gardens. A man introduced to his ancestors. Novel party. Beds and bedrooms. World of books. Jack Abbott's breakfast. On seeing a pigeon make love. Month of May. The Giuli tre. Few remarks on the cure vice called lying. Criticism on female beauty. Of deceased statesmen who have written verses. Female sovereigns of England
“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.”
Source: The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty
“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.”
Source: The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt
“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.”
Source: The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty
