Lamb, Charles quotes
1775-1834 British Essayist CriticThe greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
Lamb, Charles
Deeds and Good Deeds
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
Lamb, Charles
Books - Reading
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
Lamb, Charles
Journalism and Journalists
Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Lamb, Charles
Books - Reading
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Lamb, Charles
Competition
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Lamb, Charles
Boys
I love to lose myself in other men s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.
Lamb, Charles
Books - Reading
Lawyers I suppose were children once.
Lamb, Charles
Law and Lawyers
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
Lamb, Charles
Family
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
Lamb, Charles
Festivals
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
Lamb, Charles
Gifts
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Lamb, Charles
Law and Lawyers
Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.
Lamb, Charles
Home
Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don t much care if I never see another mountain in my life.
Lamb, Charles
Friends and Friendship
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
Lamb, Charles
Friends and Friendship
Pain is life -- the sharper, the more evidence of life.
Lamb, Charles
Pain
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
Lamb, Charles
Fashion
To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
Lamb, Charles
Illness
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
Lamb, Charles
Laughter
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
Lamb, Charles
Newspapers
Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.
Lamb, Charles
Riches
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
Lamb, Charles
Truth
Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.
Lamb, Charles
Teachers and Teaching
For God s sake (I never was more serious) don t make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print... substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.
Lamb, Charles
Reputation
How a sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated in him as his only duty,
Lamb, Charles
Selfishness
In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
Lamb, Charles
Science and Scientists
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Lamb, Charles
Puns
When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.
Lamb, Charles
Children
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Lamb, Charles
Cards
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.
Lamb, Charles
Cosmos
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.
Lamb, Charles
Association
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
Lamb, Charles
Contentment
Don t introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can t hate a man whom I know.
Lamb, Charles
Attitude
The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.
Lamb, Charles
Appearance
The vices of some men are magnificent.
Lamb, Charles
Vice