Top 273 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Lamb - Page 4

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.

Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.

The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"

Who has not felt how sadly sweet The dream of home, the dream of home, Steals o'er the heart, too soon to fleet, When far o'er sea or land we roam?

Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.

Our spirits grow gray before our hairs.

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.

A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.

Science has succeeded to poetry, no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?

The light that lies In woman's eyes.

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

When thus the heart is in a vein Of tender thought, the simplest strain Can touch it with peculiar power.

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.

Books which are no books.

To sigh, yet feel no pain; To weep, yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by.

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

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.

Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.

Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

I give thee all,-I can no more, Though poor the off'ring be; My heart and lute are all the store That I can bring to thee.

I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.

Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!

Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold.

Oh, the pleasure of eating my dinner alone!

My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me.

Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married couple; in that of the lady particularly; it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes for her.

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of non pertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity.

When twilight dews are falling soft Upon the rosy sea, love, I watch the star whose beam so oft Has lighted me to thee, love.

The vices of some men are magnificent.

Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid

When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.

A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.

To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness.

A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.

Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.

In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.

Sassafras wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar hath to some a delicacy beyond the China luxury.

There was a little man, and he had a little soul; And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!

When true hearts lie wither'd And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone?

Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.

'T is sweet to think that where'er we rove We are sure to find something blissful and dear; And that when we 're far from the lips we love, We 've but to make love to the lips we are near.

We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies.

A babe is fed with milk and praise.

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.

Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,- One minute of heaven is worth them all.

The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling - a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.

Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea.

The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

An album is a garden, not for show Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow.

(The pig) hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure - and for such a tomb might be content to die.

As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances, May that side the sun 's upon Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances!

We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been.

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.