Charles Lamb
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.Collection: Sweet
I am in love with this green Earth.Collection: Love
His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with.Collection: Sarcastic
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.Collection: Despair
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."Collection: Business
Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded.Collection: Littles
For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.Collection: Dog
Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.Collection: Men
May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome, two pipes toothsome, three pipes noisome, four pipes fulsome, five pipes quarrelsome; and that's the some on't.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Moving
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.Collection: Tombstone
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by mode meals? A total blank.Collection: Health
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free, First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.Collection: Flower
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts-a grace before Milton-a grace before Shakespeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Fairie Queene?Collection: Spiritual
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.Collection: Eye
I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!Collection: Music
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.Collection: Health
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.Collection: Society
The light that lies In woman's eyes.Collection: Lying
A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.Collection: Eye
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.Collection: Book
A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.Collection: Fire
Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laidCollection: Sleep
As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, So deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So dark when I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.Collection: Sweet
When true hearts lie wither'd And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone?Collection: Lying
Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.Collection: Silence
Half as sober as a judge.Collection: Judging
There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.Collection: Sweet
Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.Collection: Men
We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor relations.Collection: Sight
Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed.Collection: Strong
It is with some violation of 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 which they assume upon the stage.Collection: Character
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.Collection: Use
Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea.Collection: Daughter
We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one.Collection: Taste
In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.Collection: Science
'T is sweet to think that where'er we rove We are sure to find something blissful and dear; And that when we 're far from the lips we love, We 've but to make love to the lips we are near.Collection: Love
The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"Collection: Hate
Our spirits grow gray before our hairs.Collection: Hair
Sassafras wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar hath to some a delicacy beyond the China luxury.Collection: Luxury
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.Collection: Book
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?Collection: Eye
No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself,--the most unwholesome of food.Collection: Work
Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.Collection: Attitude
Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . Sabbathless Satan!Collection: Work
Damn the age. I'll write for antiquity.Collection: Writing
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public.Collection: Rags
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.Collection: Gambling
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 labours 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 the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.Collection: Apples