CHARLES LAMB QUOTES II
English essayist and critic (1775-1834)
It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar surface.
CHARLES LAMB
"Grace Before Meat", Elia
A number of moralists condemn lotteries and refuse to see anything noble in the passion of the ordinary gambler. They judge gambling as some atheists judge religion, by its excesses.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
The vices of some men are magnificent.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.
CHARLES LAMB
"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia
Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oct. 23, 1802
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.
CHARLES LAMB
"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table Talk", Works: Essays and Sketches
Trample not on the ruins of a man.
CHARLES LAMB
"Confessions of a Drunkard", The Last Essays of Elia
Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Vincent Novello, Nov. 8, 1830
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Feb. 13, 1797
The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble leveling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.
CHARLES LAMB
"To the Shade of Elliston", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
Dream not ... of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jun. 10, 1796
Cultivate simplicity ... or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into daylight with it its own modest buds, and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of expression.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nov. 8, 1796
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
CHARLES LAMB
Bon-Mots
Are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert; or cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone?
CHARLES LAMB
"Estimate of De Foe's Secondary Novels", The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Miscellaneous prose, 1798-1834
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?
CHARLES LAMB
The Collected Essays of Charles Lamb
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Two Races of Men", Essays of Elia
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb
Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?
CHARLES LAMB
"On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born"