“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
“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.”
“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.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift