Charles Lamb: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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."”

Charles Lamb

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

Business

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

Charles Lamb

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?”

Charles Lamb

Letter to George Dyer (December 20, 1830)

World , Art , Science

“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)

Dead

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

Charles Lamb

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)

Dead

“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)

Love

“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)

Life , Despair

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

Charles Lamb

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

Age

“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)

Men

“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.”

Charles Lamb

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

Books , History

“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.”

Charles Lamb

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)

Feeling , Night

“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)

“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)

Life

“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”

Charles Lamb

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

Marriage

“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)

Game

“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)

Pleasure , Failure , Sense

“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)

Books