Leigh Hunt
Leigh Hunt
James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 October 1784
loss sorrow tears
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.
sports thinking voice
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.
two lovely world
The two divinest things this world has got,A lovely woman in a rural spot!
laughter sorrow tears
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.
occasions
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?
wonder ifs cease
No wonder is greater than any other wonder, and if once explained ceases to be a wonder.
quality wit-and-humor ancient
For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.
affection melancholy trifles
Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles.
dwelling perfect touching
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.
summer sweet morning
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.
helping-others sorrow bears
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.
prayer blessing wish
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.
nature eye animal
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.
eye animal expression
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.