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.
music thinking tunes
I even think that, sentimentally, I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.
dresses caprice mere
No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.
children believe names
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.
men ruins
Trample not on the ruins of a man.
pleasure
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.
animal cages wild-animal
Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.