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
book reading originality
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
reading book thinking
I cannot sit and think; books think for me.
reading ears needs
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.
queens book 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?
book reading jealous
There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.
spiritual book reading
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts-a grace before Milton-a grace before Shakespeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Fairie Queene?
reading thinking walking
When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.
dog book reading
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.
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?
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.
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.