Charles Lamb Quotes

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 .

Friends with such literary luminaries as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt, Lamb was at the centre of a major literary circle in England. He has been referred to by E. V. Lucas, his principal biographer, as "the most lovable figure in English literature". Wikipedia

✵ 10. February 1775 – 27. December 1834

Charles Lamb photo

Works

Last Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb

Essays of Elia

Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb

Last Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb

Essays of Elia

Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb: 85 quotes9 likes

Famous Charles Lamb Quotes

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”

Quoted in "Table Talk" http://books.google.com/books?id=LIxUAAAAcAAJ&q=%22greatest+pleasure+I+know+is+to+do+a+good+action+by+stealth+and+to+have+it+found+out+by+accident%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage in The Athenaeum magazine (4 January 1834).

“Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and irony itself-- do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?”

“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”

Source: The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb

“New Year's Day is every man's birthday.”

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

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Poor Relations.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Charles Lamb Quotes about life

“Nursed amid her [London's] noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?”

Letter to Thomas Manning (February 15, 1802)

“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

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

Letter to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801)

“If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Valentine's Day.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Popular Fallacies: XIII, That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Charles Lamb Quotes about books

“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.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Source: Essays of Elia

“A presentation copy…is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Popular Fallacies: XI, That We Must Not Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Books which are no books.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)..
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Books think for me.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Things in books' clothing.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“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.”

To the Editor of the Every-Day Book; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Charles Lamb: Trending quotes

“Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
While each man, through thy height'ning steam,
Does like a smoking Etna seem.”

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

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

“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.
Essays of Elia (1823)

Charles Lamb Quotes

“I love to lose myself in other men's minds.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“The flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry”

Lamb's letter to Charles Cowden Clarke, in summer, 1821. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 263.

“Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping”

In his letter to Vincent Novello, November 8, 1830.

“Please to blot out gentle hearted, and substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-ey'd, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the Gentleman in question.”

Letter to Coleridge (August 14, 1800)

“I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.”

Written at Cambridge; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

The Convalescent.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”

Letter to Samuel Rogers (December 21, 1833)

“For I hate, yet love thee, so,
That, whichever thing I show,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrained hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.”

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

“Fanny Kelly's divine plain face.”

Letter to Mrs. Wordsworth (February 18, 1818)

“The mixture spoils two good things, as Charles Lamb (Elia) used to say of brandy and water.”

Abraham Hayward, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1848.
Attributed

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

Letter to Thomas Manning (December 26, 1815)

“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.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

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

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Amicus Redivivus.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.”

Letter to Thomas Manning (February 15, 1802)

“For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.”

Letter to Coleridge (August 6, 1800)

“In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spiritus angelical
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns
No such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called: they best
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield,
To him of his own works the praise, his due.”

Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72.

“I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people’s time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“It argues an insensibility.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“[Of Coleridge] His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged.”

Letter to Wordsworth (April 26, 1816)

“Far transcend my weak invention.
’Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her store of script’ral knowledge
(Bible-taught without a college)
Which by reading she could gather,
Teaches him to say Our Father
To the common Parent, who
Colour not respects nor hue.
White and Black in him have part,
Who looks not to the skin, but heart.”

“The Young Catechist” 1827.

“Nay, rather,
Plant divine, of rarest virtue;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.”

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

“Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

A Chapter on Ears; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“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.”

My First Play; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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

Letter to Coleridge 1790.

“Thou through such a mist dost show us,
That our best friends do not know us.”

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

“Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."”

Autobiographical Recollections (Leslie) ; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.”

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

“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?”

Letter to George Dyer (December 20, 1830)

“The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Oxford in the Vacation.
Essays of Elia (1823)

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

On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (1827).

“I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

New Year's Eve.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“It is good to love the unknown.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Valentine's Day; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Imperfect Sympathies.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!”

Letter to Proctor (January 22, 1829), in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject (2000), p. 526

“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.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

The Two Races of Men.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Presents, I often say, endear absents.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.”

Letter to Southey (August 9, 1815)

“Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights’ sensations.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Witches, and Other Night Fears.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Severe and saintly righteousness
Composed the clear white bridal dress;
Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King
Bought with his blood the marriage ring”

A Vision Of Repentance, as quoted in Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb.

“A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it …”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

The Two Races of Men.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Gone before
To that unknown and silent shore.”

Hester (1803), st. 7.

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

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Oxford in the Vacation.
Essays of Elia (1823)

“Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, nor for Handel.”

Letter to Mrs. William Hazlitt (1830)

“I have something more to do than to feel.”

Letter to Coleridge (September 27, 1796), after the death of Lamb's mother.

“I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.”

Letter to John Chambers (1817)

“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

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