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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.”

Charles Lamb

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)

“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)

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

Charles Lamb

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.”

Charles Lamb

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.”

Charles Lamb

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.”

Charles Lamb

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.”

Charles Lamb

“The Young Catechist” 1827.

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

Charles Lamb

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

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

Charles Lamb

Letter to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801)

“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.”

Charles Lamb

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.”

Charles Lamb

Letter to Coleridge 1790.

“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)

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

Charles Lamb

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)