English essayist and critic (1775-1834)
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to William Wordsworth, Mar. 20, 1822
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
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Feb. 13, 1797
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
letter to Vincent Novello, Nov. 8, 1830
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oct. 11, 1802
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.
CHARLES LAMB
"Grace Before Meat", Elia