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
tired sleep past
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
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?
lying mean evil
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.
children growing-up blessed
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.
laughter ends sigh
Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?
running laughter drama
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.
hair grace ifs
The loveliest hair is nothing, if the wearer is incapable of a grace.
wall hair giving
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.
hair seems
There seems a life in hair, though it be dead.
humility pride forever
May exalting and humanizing thoughts forever accompany me, making me confident without pride, and modest without servility.
improvement
Improvement is nature.
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.
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.
wonder ifs cease
No wonder is greater than any other wonder, and if once explained ceases to be a wonder.