Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: The Universe
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
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: Cancer, Health, Selfishness
Opinions is a species of property – I am always desirous of sharing
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Opinions
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
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
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
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Contentment
The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Appearance
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Society
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
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature … is, perhaps, cowardice.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Courage, Cowardice
A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Gardening
To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness.
—Charles Lamb
Man while he loves is never quite depraved.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Love
Ballads are the vocal portraits of the national mind.
—Charles Lamb
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Truth
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 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
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Lawyers
In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Science, Scientists
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Fashion
Lawyers I suppose were children once.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Law, Lawyers
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
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Books, Reading
New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: One liners, Birthdays
Borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Books, Reading, Libraries
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Competition, Gambling
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: News, Curiosity
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Children
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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