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
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Laughter
Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don’t much care if I never see another mountain in my life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Pain is life—the sharper, the more evidence of life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Pain
Lawyers I suppose were children once.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Law, Lawyers
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
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
—Charles Lamb
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Parties
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature … is, perhaps, cowardice.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Cowardice, Courage
The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Choice
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
To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness.
—Charles Lamb
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Truth
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Lawyers, Law
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
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Society
Opinions is a species of property – I am always desirous of sharing
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Opinions
A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Gardening
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
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
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Contentment
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
The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Appearance
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Fashion
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Children
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
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
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
Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Perspective, Beliefs, Weakness
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Lawyers
We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Age
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 man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Journalists, Journalism
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Competition, Gambling
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy’s holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.
—Charles Lamb
I could never hate anyone I knew.
—Charles Lamb
‘Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Candor, Friendship, Friends and Friendship
The vices of some men are magnificent.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Virtue, Vice
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
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by moderate meals? A total blank.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Health
Mother’s love grows by giving.
—Charles Lamb
Topics: Mothers, Mother
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