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
common count date january nativity regarded
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.
pouring
Angel-duck, angel-duck, winged and silly, / Pouring a watering-pot over a lily.
books borrowers creators odd
Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
errand riddle short thy visit
Riddle of destiny, who can show / What thy short visit meant, or know / What thy errand here below?
half searching transcend
Truths, which transcend the searching School-men's vein, / And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.
abundance alley bargains blest blind cannot cause children commonly consider defeat few fond hopes life marriages people poorest possibly pride rarity street taking turn vicious
When I consider how little of a rarity children are / that every street and blind alley swarms with them / that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance / that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains / how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. / I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.
wall tired air
I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four without ease or interposition ... these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk!
sweet children kind
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature?but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind.
hands dirt trump
If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!
strong drinking men
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.
men next good-work
Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.
judging half sober
Half as sober as a judge.
fancy wanderers
The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.
play age cards
You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!