Charles Lamb: Quotes about books

Charles Lamb was English essayist. Explore interesting quotes on books.

Charles Lamb: 170 quotes9 likes

“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)

“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).

“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)

“Things in books' clothing.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
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)

“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)