Charles Lamb Quotes
Writer & Essayist
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
New Year's Day is every man's birthday.
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.
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
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.
For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.
Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.
The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.
What is reading, but silent conversation.
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.
I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.
I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
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.
I could never hate anyone I knew.
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.
It is good to love the unknown.
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.
Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
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.