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Charles Lamb
83 quotes
“Severe and saintly righteousness Composed the clear white bridal dress; Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King Bought with his blood the marriage ring”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb The delicate sense and most divine repose Of spiritus angelical Blessed be God, The measure of his judgments is not fixed By man's erroneous standard. He discerns No such inordinate difference and vast Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, No man on earth is holy called: they best Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield, To him of his own works the praise, his due.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1790 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Coleridge (1790)
“I have something more to do than to feel.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1796 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Coleridge (27 September 1796), after the death of Lamb's mother.
“Atheists, or Deists only in the name, By word or deed deny a God. They eat Their daily bread, & draw the breath of heaven, Without a thought or thanks; heav'n's roof to them Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, No more, that light them to their purposes. They 'wander loose about.' They nothing see, Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save. So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,' Or like a dream of murder in the night, Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking The bones of all their pride.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Living Without God In The World (1798)
“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.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Familiar Faces (1798)
“For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1800 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Coleridge (6 August 1800)
“Please to blot out gentle hearted, and substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-ey'd, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the Gentleman in question.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1800 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Coleridge (14 August 1800)
“Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1801 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Wordsworth (30 January 1801)
“The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1802 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Manning (15 February 1802)
“Nursed amid her [London's] noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1802 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Manning (15 February 1802)
“Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1803 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hester (1803), st. 7
“A good-natured woman...which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1805 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Hazlitt (10 November 1805)
“Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Southey (9 August 1815)
“This very night I am going to leave off Tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Manning (26 December 1815)
“[Of Coleridge] His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1816 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Wordsworth (26 April 1816)
“I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1817 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Chambers (1817)
“Fanny Kelly's divine plain face.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1818 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mrs. Wordsworth (18 February 1818)
“Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . . . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . . . . . . Sabbath-less Satan!”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1819 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Work (1819)
“The flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1821 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lamb's letter to Charles Cowden Clarke (summer, 1821), as quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905), Letter 263
“I came home for ever!”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Bernard Barton (6 April 1825), on leaving his "33 years' desk" at the East India House.
“A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state)—it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Coleridge (2 July 1825), collected as Letter 358 in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters, editor E. V. Lucas.
“Far transcend my weak invention. ’Tis a simple Christian child, Missionary young and mild, From her store of script’ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say Our Father To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Young Catechist” (1827)
“Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (1827)
“When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!'”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Proctor (22 January 1829), in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject (2000), p. 526
“Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, nor for Handel.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mrs. William Hazlitt (1830)
“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?”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George Dyer (20 December 1830)
“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 (1775–1834) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In his letter to Vincent Novello (8 November 1830)
“He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Samuel Rogers (21 December 1833)
“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1834 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "Table Talk" in The Athenaeum magazine (4 January 1834)
“The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My First Play; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Not if I know myself at all.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Old and New Schoolmaster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Written at Cambridge; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To the Editor of the Every-Day Book; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Captain Starkey; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Neat, not gaudy.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1806 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Wordsworth (1806); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lamb's Suppers; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Autobiographical Recollections (Leslie) ; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 186
“For I hate, yet love thee, so, That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, through thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thou through such a mist dost show us, That our best friends do not know us.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stinking’st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite—”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source