Top 273 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Lamb - Page 2

I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

Trample not on the ruins of a man.

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.

Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved.

Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die.

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?

I hate the man who eats without knowing what he’s eating. I doubt his taste in more important things.

Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime!

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.

Judge not man by his outward manifestation of faith; for some there are who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the guidance of faith; others who stoutly venture in the dark their human confidence, their leader, which they mistake for faith; some whose hope totters upon crutches; others who stalk into futurity upon stilts. The difference is chiefly constitutional with them.

Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.

I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library.

Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.

If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.

I am in love with the green earth.

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.

I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?

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.

He who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.

For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him.

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!

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference.

Be not frightened at the hard words "imposition," "imposture;" give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares, entertained angels.

It is good to have friends at court.

How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

We were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger.

Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public.

No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself,--the most unwholesome of food.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.

A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions.

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?

The world meets nobody half way.

A man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings.

So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.

Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.

The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.

Man is a gaming animal.

I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature.

Opinions is a species of property - I am always desirous of sharing.

The true poet dreams being awake.

Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.

The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.

Damn the age. I'll write for antiquity.

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?

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.