Charles Lamb Quotes
The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?
For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime!
This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven.
The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
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.
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.
Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!
Dr Parr...asked him, how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, 'I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.'
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.
