Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

— Charles Lamb

Lawyers I suppose were children once.

— Charles Lamb

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

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,

— Charles Lamb

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.

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

The vices of some men are magnificent.

— Charles Lamb

I could never hate anyone I knew.

— Charles Lamb

In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond cake and orange.

— Charles Lamb

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

— Charles Lamb

This is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter-cross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all forespent two-penny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own.

— Charles Lamb

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia; and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine, and his true church.

— Charles Lamb

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business in the green fields, and the town--To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad, To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?

— Charles Lamb

Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.

— Charles Lamb

Where, though I, by sour physician, Am debarr'd the full fruition Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odours, that give life Like glances from a neighbour's wife; And still live in the by-places And the suburbs of thy graces; And in thy borders take delight.

— Charles Lamb

I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing away-with altogether, of those consolatory interstices and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons,--the red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. . . . These were bright visitations in a scholar's and clerk's life--"far off their coming shone."

— Charles Lamb

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts--a grace before Milton--a grace before Shakespeare--a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Fairie Queene ?

— Charles Lamb

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault?

— Charles Lamb

Array'd--a half-angelic sight--In vests of pure Baptismal white, The Mother to the Font doth bring The little helpless nameless thing, With hushes soft and mild caressing, At once to get--a name and blessing.

— Charles Lamb

How swift have flown To me thy girlish times, a woman grown Beneath my heedless eyes! in vain I rack My fancy to believe the almanac, That speaks thee Twenty-One.

— Charles Lamb

It was like passing out of Time into Eternity--for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself.

— Charles Lamb