Leigh Hunt > Quotes

“Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.”
― Leigh Hunt

“Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making. ”
― Leigh Hunt

“Colors are the smiles of nature.”
― Leigh Hunt

“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!”
― Leigh Hunt, The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt

“There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.”
― Leigh Hunt

“I entrench myself in books equally against sorrow and the weather.”
― Leigh Hunt

“Stolen kisses are always sweetest.”
― Leigh Hunt

“Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers”
― Leigh Hunt

“Mere grimness is as easy as grinning; but it requires something to put a handsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offenses, particularly of blood and wounds...”
― Leigh Hunt

“Persons impatient of other’s deficiencies are in fact likely to be equally undiscerning of their merits; and are not aware, in either case, how much they are exposing the deficiencies on their own side. Not only, however, do they get into this dilemma, but what is more, they are lowering their respectability beneath that of the dullest person in the room. They shew themselves deficient, not merely in the qualities they miss in [a wise man who doesn’t make an ostentatious show of his knowledge] but in those which he really possesses, such as self knowledge and good temper. Were they as wise as they pretend to be, they would equal him in these points, and know how to extract something good from them in spite of his deficiency in the other; for intellectual qualities are not the only ones that excite the reflections, or conciliate the regard, of the truly intelligent, of those who can study human nature in all its bearings, and love it or sympathize with it, for all its affections.”
― Leigh Hunt, The Round Table, Vol. 1: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners

“The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.”
― Leigh Hunt

“POPPIES. 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 beauty show. Central depth of purple,     Leaves more bright than rose, Who shall tell what brightest thought     Out of darkest grows? Who, through what funereal pain     Souls to love and peace attain? Visions aye are on us,     Unto eyes of power, Pluto’s alway setting sun,     And Prosérpine’s bower: There, like bees, the pale souls come For our drink with drowsy hum. Taste, ye mortals, also;     Milky-hearted, we; Taste, but with a reverent care;     Active-patient be. Too much gladness brings to gloom     Those who on the gods presume.”
― Leigh Hunt, Complete Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt

“Saying all one feels and thinks
In clever daffodils and pinks;
In puns of tulips and in phrases,
Charming for their truth, of daisies.”
― Leigh Hunt

“And as we mean to be very powerful writers, as well as every thing else that is desirable, power is never seen to so much advantage as when it goes about a thing carelessly; you like to see a light horseman, who seems as if he could abolish you with a passing cut, and not a great heavy fellow, who looks as if he should tumble down in case of missing you, or a little red staring busy body, who would be obliged to wield his sword two-handed, and kill himself first with exertion.”
― Leigh Hunt

“Dream for a moment’s space of care and strife, Wake, stare, and smile, and that is human Life.”
― Leigh Hunt, Complete Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt

“We have avoided the trouble of adding assumed characters to our real ones; and shall talk, just as we think, walk, and take dinner, in our own proper persons. It is true, the want of old age, or of a few patriarchal eccentricities to exercise people's patronage on, and induce their self-love to bear with us, may be a deficiency in our pretensions with some; but we must plainly confess, with whatever mortification, that we are still at a flourishing time of life; and that the trouble and experience, which have passed over our heads, have left our teeth, hair, and eyes, pretty nearly as good as they found them.”
― Leigh Hunt, The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners

“The most trifling matters may sometimes be not only the commencement, but the causes, of the gravest discussions. The fall of an apple from a tree suggested the doctrine of gravitation; and the same apple, for aught we know, served up in a dumpling, may have assisted the philosopher in his notions of heat ; for who has not witnessed similar causes and effects at a dinner table ? I confess, a piece of mutton has supplied me with arguments, as well as chops, for a week ; I have seen a hare or a cod’s-head giving hints to a friend for his next Essay; and have known the most solemn reflections rise, with a pair of claws, out of a pigeon-pie.”
― Leigh Hunt, The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners

“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.”
― Leigh Hunt, The Round Table, Vol. 1: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners