Charles Lamb Quotes

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.

Be not frightened at the hard words "imposition," "imposture;" give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares, entertained angels.

Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.

All people have their blind side-their superstitions.

Damn the age. I'll write for antiquity.

Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

O money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou are health and liberty and strength, and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!

Judge not man by his outward manifestation of faith; for some there are who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the guidance of faith; others who stoutly venture in the dark their human confidence, their leader, which they mistake for faith; some whose hope totters upon crutches; others who stalk into futurity upon stilts. The difference is chiefly constitutional with them.

Philanthropy, like charity, must begin at home.

May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

The vices of some men are magnificent.

As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances, May that side the sun 's upon Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances!

English physicians kill you, the French let you die.

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice.

For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.

Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.

Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.

Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.

Dr Parr...asked him, how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, 'I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.'

I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from.

This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.

We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been.

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.

A man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings.

You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

Mother's love grows by giving.

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven.

Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.

My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me.

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself,--the most unwholesome of food.

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.

A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.

The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.

His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with.