Quotes from work
Last Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb

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

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Poor Relations.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

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