A Quote by Charles Lamb

I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.

Charles Lamb

Quote Topics

Enemy Ill Knew Man Never Puns

Quote Author

Charles Lamb
English - Critic
February 10, 1775 - December 27, 1834

Satirical writers and speakers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they are thought to be. They do winnow the corn, it is true, but it is to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others, though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. It is much easier for an ill-natured man than for a good-natured man to be smart and witty.

James Sharp

An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.

Joseph Addison

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

Mark Twain

To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.

Oscar Wilde

Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.

Gautama Buddha

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.

William Temple

When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.

Rumi

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill natured.

E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

I like really bad puns - proper, red-top, nasty puns - I find them funny.

Johnny Flynn

Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well.

Hector Hugh Munro

There is no disgrace in an enemy suffering ill at an enemy's hand, when you hate mutually.

Aeschylus

Churchill , he is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have.

Josip Broz Tito

A man fashions ill for himself who fashions ill for another, and the ill design is most ill for the designer.

Hesiod

The enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men. We all have the same enemy. The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind. The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.