CHARLES LAMB QUOTES II

English essayist and critic (1775-1834)

Charles Lamb quote

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


The vices of some men are magnificent.

CHARLES LAMB

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

Tags: vice


There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.

CHARLES LAMB

"Table Talk", Works: Essays and Sketches


Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.

CHARLES LAMB

"The Superannuated Man", Elia and The last essays of Elia

Tags: time


Trample not on the ruins of a man.

CHARLES LAMB

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


What a place to be is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours ... were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets.

CHARLES LAMB

Elia and the Last Essays of Elia

Tags: libraries


Who first invented work and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
To the unremitting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town;
To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad!
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
SABBATHLESS SATAN!

CHARLES LAMB

"Sonnet", The Examiner, Jun. 20, 1819

Tags: work


'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


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

"The Superannuated Man", Last Essays of Elia


A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

CHARLES LAMB

"Popular Fallacies", Last Essays of Elia


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

letter to George Dyer, Dec. 20, 1830


Clap an extinguisher on your irony, if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

CHARLES LAMB

A Complete Elia


Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

CHARLES LAMB

"Witches and Other Night Fears", Essays of Elia


Cultivate simplicity ... or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into daylight with it its own modest buds, and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of expression.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nov. 8, 1796

Tags: simplicity


Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed.

CHARLES LAMB

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

Tags: alcoholism


Dream not ... of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jun. 10, 1796

Tags: madness


Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

CHARLES LAMB

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


For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.... 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

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aug. 1800


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


He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

CHARLES LAMB

Captain Starkey

Tags: society