What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Libraries
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
Topics: Reputation
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
Topics: Children
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Laughter
Is it a stale remark to say that I have constantly found the interest excited at a playhouse to bear an exact inverse proportion to the price paid for admission?
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Acting
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Contentment
Who first invented work, and bound the free and holiday-rejoicing spirit down?
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Holidays
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the Pyramids.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Jews
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Gifts
Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.
—Charles Lamb
Man while he loves is never quite depraved.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Love
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
—Charles Lamb
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Fashion
We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Age
The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Choice
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
—Charles Lamb
Lawyers I suppose were children once.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Lawyers, Law
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
Topics: Selfishness, Health, Cancer
Opinions is a species of property – I am always desirous of sharing
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Opinions
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by moderate meals? A total blank.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Health
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Books
So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Sin
In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Scientists, Science
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: News, Curiosity
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
Topics: Home
The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Appearance
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Competition, Gambling
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
Topics: Humor
Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Beliefs, Perspective, Weakness
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Society
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Keats English Poet
- Daniel Defoe English Writer
- John Donne English Poet, Cleric
- Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie English Novelist, Biographer
- Geoffrey Chaucer English Poet
- Freeman Dyson American Physicist, Author
- J. K. Rowling English Novelist
- Walter Pater English Critic, Essayist
- Thomas Hood British Poet, Humorist
- Stephen Spender English Poet, Critic
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