Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English critic Charles Lamb.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Charles Lamb was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847).
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.
The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
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.
Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.
I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
New Year's Day is every man's birthday.
What is reading, but silent conversation.
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
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.
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
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.
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.
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.
I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.
Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
I could never hate anyone I knew.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.
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.
It is good to love the unknown.
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.
Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.
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.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.
She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.
To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice.
You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!
English physicians kill you, the French let you die.
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.
Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.
The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
I ask and wish not to appear
More beauteous, rich or gay:
Lord, make me wiser every year,
And better every day.
When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have nonsense respected.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
A sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature.
No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.
You look wise, pray correct that error.
This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven.