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Charles Lamb
83 quotes
“A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I have no ear.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Chapter on Ears; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is good to love the unknown.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Valentine's Day; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Harper Lee
“Presents, I often say, endear absents.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“It argues an insensibility.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love to lose myself in other men's minds.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I am not walking, I am reading;”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books think for me.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things in books' clothing.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books which are no books.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it ...”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. —With me “the former things are passed away,” and I have something more to do that [than] to feel. God almighty have us all in his keeping.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1796 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lamb in September 27, 1796. In his letter to Coleridge; after the family tragedy. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Letters (1905).
“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further...God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1796 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lamb's letter to Coleridge (24 October 1796) as quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905), Letter 11.
“I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books — biblia abiblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so Catholic, so unexcluding.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . . . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . . . . . . Sabbathless Satan!”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) said by 1834 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source