Charles Lamb
Charles Lamb
Charles Lambwas an English writer and essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth10 February 1775
family irrelevance poor
A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.
spring heart simplicity
Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
art past looks
Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!
pain night joy
Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.
sports pain hours
To sigh, yet feel no pain; To weep, yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by.
friendship mountain care
Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.
purses charity philanthropy
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.
knowledge ifs knows
Not if I know myself at all.
nature earth green
I am in love with the green earth.
book mind
She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
drinking men sober
The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.
marriage wedding couple
Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married couple; in that of the lady particularly; it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes for her.
knowledge men may
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.
anxiety human-nature cowardice
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.