Quotes by Lamb, Charles

"The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."

Lamb, Charles on deeds and good deeds   

"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 on family   

"The beggar wears all colors fearing none."

Lamb, Charles on fashion   

"The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days."

Lamb, Charles on festivals   

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

Lamb, Charles on friends and friendship   

"'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected."

Lamb, Charles on friends and friendship
13 fans of this quote   

"Presents, I often say, endear absents."

Lamb, Charles on gifts   

"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 on home   

"To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives."

Lamb, Charles on illness   

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

Lamb, Charles on journalism and journalists   

"A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market."

Lamb, Charles on laughter   

"Lawyers I suppose were children once."

Lamb, Charles on law and lawyers   

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"He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides."

Lamb, Charles on law and lawyers   

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"The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance."

Lamb, Charles on appearance   

"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment."

Lamb, Charles on newspapers   

"Pain is life -- the sharper, the more evidence of life."

Lamb, Charles on pain
14 fans of this quote   

"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 on association   

"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 on attitude
4 fans of this quote   

"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 on puns   

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"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 on reputation   

"Riches are chiefly good because they give us time."

Lamb, Charles on riches   

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"In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world."

Lamb, Charles on science   

"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 on selfishness   

"He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality."

Lamb, Charles on books - reading   

"Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes."

Lamb, Charles on books - reading   

"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 on books - reading   

"Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people."

Lamb, Charles on boys   

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"Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."

Lamb, Charles on cards   

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"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 on teacher   

"The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth."

Lamb, Charles on truth   

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"The vices of some men are magnificent."

Lamb, Charles on vice   

"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 on children   

"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."

Lamb, Charles on competition   

"My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more."

Lamb, Charles on contentment
5 fans of this quote   

"Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them."

Lamb, Charles on cosmos   

"I could never hate anyone I knew. "

Lamb, Charles on uncategorised