Charles Lamb
» Appearance » “The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.”
» Association » “We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.”
» Attitude » “Don’t introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can’t hate a man whom I know.”
» Books and Reading » “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.”
» Books and Reading » “He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.”
» Books and Reading » “Borrowers of books –those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”
» Boys » “Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.”
» Cards » “Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.”
» Children » “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.”
» Competition » “Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.”
» Contentment » “My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.”
» Cosmos » “Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.”
» Family » “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.”
» Fashion » “The beggar wears all colors fearing none.”
» Festivals » “The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.”
» Gifts » “Presents, I often say, endear absents.”
» Good Deeds » “The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
» Home » “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.”
» Illness » “To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.”
» Journalism and Journalists » “The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.”
» Laughter » “A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.”
» Law and Lawyers » “He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”
» Law and Lawyers » “Lawyers I suppose were children once.”
» Newspapers » “Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.”
» Pain » “Pain is life — the sharper, the more evidence of life.”
» Puns » “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.”
» Reputation » “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.”
» Riches » “Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”
» Science and Scientists » “In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.”
» Selfishness » “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,”
» Teachers and Teaching » “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.”
» Truth » “The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.”
» Vice » “The vices of some men are magnificent.”
