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
men littles sin
So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.
observation truism commonplace
Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.
tombstone moving men
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!
sarcastic voice obnoxious
His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with.
dream mad fancy
Dream not ... of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!
men good-man doe
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.
sweet children bears
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
family shadow pieces
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of non pertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity.
might spurs kind
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.
science world relate
In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
use
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
faith mistake dark
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.
children parent serious
A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.
eye heaven black
A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.