Charles Lamb
The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.Collection: Drinking
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?Collection: Cousin
How often you are irresistibly drawn to a plain, unassuming woman, whose soft silvery tones render her positively attractive! In the social circle, how pleasant it is to hear a woman talk in that low key which always characterizes the true lady. In the sanctuary of home, how such a voice soothes the fretful child and cheers the weary husband!Collection: Cheer
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.Collection: Doors
A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions.Collection: Knowledge
Judge not man by his outward manifestation of faith; for some there are who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the guidance of faith; others who stoutly venture in the dark their human confidence, their leader, which they mistake for faith; some whose hope totters upon crutches; others who stalk into futurity upon stilts. The difference is chiefly constitutional with them.Collection: Faith
Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken.Collection: Love
Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.Collection: Love
A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.Collection: Book
Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.Collection: Walking Sticks
I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.Collection: Men
If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.Collection: Time
I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.Collection: Business
Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved.Collection: Love
The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.Collection: Music
The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.Collection: Doe
Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die.Collection: Love
How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!Collection: Cancer
Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.Collection: Summer
Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.Collection: Spurs
No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.Collection: Firsts
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.Collection: Reading
Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews’s Sermons?Collection: Reading
If thou would’st have me sing and play As once I play’d and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.Collection: Firsts