English essayist and critic (1775-1834)
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
CHARLES LAMB
"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia
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
Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.
CHARLES LAMB
Mrs. Leicester's School and Other Writings in Prose and Verse
A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
CHARLES LAMB
"Popular Fallacies", Last Essays of Elia
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Convalescent", Last Essays of Elia
A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Superannuated Man", Last Essays of Elia
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
CHARLES LAMB
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia
Books think for me.
CHARLES LAMB
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
CHARLES LAMB
"Valentine's Day", Essays of Elia
I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!
CHARLES LAMB
"New Year's Eve", Essays of Elia
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
CHARLES LAMB
"Witches and Other Night Fears", Essays of Elia
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
Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Superannuated Man", Elia and The last essays of Elia
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
CHARLES LAMB
"A Bachelor's Complaint", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
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
Take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.
CHARLES LAMB
"All Fools' Day", Elia
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him.
CHARLES LAMB
"Decay of Beggars", Elia
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.
CHARLES LAMB
attributed, Day's Collacon
No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.
CHARLES LAMB
attributed, Day's Collacon
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.
CHARLES LAMB
Captain Starkey