Charles Lamb (1775–1834) was an English author, critic, and minor poet. He is best known for the essays he wrote under the name Elia. He remains one of the most adored and read of English essayists.
Born in Temple, London, Lamb spent his ‘joyful schooldays’ at Christ’s Hospital, where he started a lasting friendship with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lamb earned his living as a clerk in the East India House. Much of his life was dedicated to caring for his sister Mary Lamb (1764–1847,) who killed their invalid mother in an attack of mania.
Lamb’s early efforts at writing included poetry, a little prose romance titled The Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (1797,) and John Woodvil (1801)—the result of his analysis of Elizabethan dramatic poetry, in whose revival he was to play so large a part.
Lamb is best known for his essays, most notably collected as The Essays of Elia (1820–23, 1833.) He is also remembered for his children’s books, which comprise Tales from Shakespeare (1807,) on which he collaborated with Mary.
Lamb’s eccentric wit—what he called a “self-pleasing quaintness”—was publicized through the identity of ‘Elia’ in The London Magazine (1820–25,) and his unfashionable dedication to London life as subject-matter earned him a place in the new Cockney School of metropolitan poets and essayists. By 1838, Charles Dickens was writing to associates endorsing the work of “the original kind-hearted, veritable Elia.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Lamb
Who first invented work, and bound the free and holiday-rejoicing spirit down?
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Holidays
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Life
Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford… but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Truth
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
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Parties
Pain is life—the sharper, the more evidence of life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Pain
Borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Libraries, Books, Reading
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by moderate meals? A total blank.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Health
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
—Charles Lamb
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
—Charles Lamb
Philanthropy, like charity, must begin at home; from this centre our sympathies should extend in an ever widening circle.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Philanthropy
I could never hate anyone I knew.
—Charles Lamb
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
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
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
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves: we encourage each other in mediocrity.—I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Associates
A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Gardening
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Society
‘Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Candor, Friends and Friendship, Friendship
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the Pyramids.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Jews
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
Opinions is a species of property – I am always desirous of sharing
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Opinions
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Children
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
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
Topics: Family
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: News, Curiosity
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
Topics: Teaching, Teachers
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
—Charles Lamb
It is with some violence to the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters they assume upon the stage.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Actors
The vices of some men are magnificent.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Vice, Virtue
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