Charles Lamb Quotes

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.

I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.

'T is sweet to think that where'er we rove We are sure to find something blissful and dear; And that when we 're far from the lips we love, We 've but to make love to the lips we are near.

Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea.

How often you are irresistibly drawn to a plain, unassuming woman, whose soft silvery tones render her positively attractive! In the social circle, how pleasant it is to hear a woman talk in that low key which always characterizes the true lady. In the sanctuary of home, how such a voice soothes the fretful child and cheers the weary husband!

Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.

Is it a stale remark to say that I have constantly found the interest excited at a playhouse to bear an exact inverse proportion to the price paid for admission?

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.

The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard, Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims Tidings of good to Zion.

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

Books which are no books.

For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.

Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.

Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.

A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.

By myself walking, To myself talking.

I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken.

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!

Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.

So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.

I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

Brandy and water spoils two good things.

If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.

It is good to have friends at court.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of non pertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

I am in love with the green earth.

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

Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime!

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?

Man is a gaming animal.

I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature.

I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.

A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions.