CHARLES LAMB QUOTES III

English essayist and critic (1775-1834)

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Mr. Rogers, Dec. 1833

Tags: lawyers


Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

CHARLES LAMB

Mrs. Leicester's School and Other Writings in Prose and Verse


I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!

CHARLES LAMB

"New Year's Eve", Essays of Elia


In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.

CHARLES LAMB

"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia


Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.

CHARLES LAMB

"Confessions of a Drunkard", The Last Essays of Elia

Tags: wit


'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.

CHARLES LAMB

"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb


I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.

CHARLES LAMB

"A Bachelor's Complaint", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia

Tags: children


A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oct. 11, 1802


Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?

CHARLES LAMB

The Collected Essays of Charles Lamb


Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Vincent Novello, Nov. 8, 1830


Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Feb. 13, 1797

Tags: friendship


Books think for me.

CHARLES LAMB

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia


Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

CHARLES LAMB

"Valentine's Day", Essays of Elia


Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?

CHARLES LAMB

"On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born"


We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor relations.

CHARLES LAMB

"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb

Tags: evolution


I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Feb. 13, 1797

Tags: John Milton


It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar surface.

CHARLES LAMB

"Grace Before Meat", Elia


The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

CHARLES LAMB

"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb


But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering fantom of the distance keep touch with me? Or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come.

CHARLES LAMB

Essays of Elia

Tags: vacations


Anything awful makes me laugh.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Robert Southey, Aug. 9, 1815