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Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Books

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Essays of Elia

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Elia

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Letters

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“I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his com position.”

HonestyClumsiness
Book:Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia
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“I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.”

SufferingFoodTasteCrueltyJustificationFlavorPig
Author:Charles Lamb
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“On these little visual interpretations [Valentine's Day cards], no emblem is so common as the heart, — that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for any thing which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal," or putting a delicate question, "Amanda, have you a midriff' to bestow?" But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance.”

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Book:Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia
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“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.”

MenHas BeensUseAgeStrongSoundWaterHe ManDrinkingCriticsPatientAbundanceFavouriteSoberTopicsAlcoholismApplauseLiquor
Book:The Works of Charles Lamb
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“The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.”

DoeDiesLosesPartyCommonFriendsGoing AwayLinksAlphabetSubtraction
Book:The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works
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“Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.”

KindBookEyeInterestNovelModernExtremesIncidentsModern Novel
Book:Essays of Elia. Rosamund Gray. Recollections of Chirst's hospital. Essays on the tragedies of Shakspeare [etc.] Letters under assumed signatures published in the Reflector. Curious fragments. Mr. H
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“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!”

KnowsYearsFacesGrowsHoursKnow HowFourAirWallTenTiredBreatheGravesGoldenEaseThirtyOfficialsNecksReliefDishesDesksThirty YearsClerksYokeConfinementPhilistinesGolden Hour
Book:The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works
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“Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it--how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all.”

MenWorldLooksMadeSometimesEyeWifeParticularPleaseTablesFortuneFancyInsipid
Book:Miscellaneous prose (1798-1834)
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“It is rather an unpleasant fact, that the ugliest and awkwardest of brute animals have the greatest resemblance to man: the monkey and the bear. The monkey is ugly too (so we think) because he is like man--as the bear is awkward, because the cumbrous action of its huge paws seems to be a preposterous imitation of the motions of human hands. Men and apes are the only animals that have hairs on the under eye-lid. Let kings know this.”

ThinkingKnowsMenHumansFactsHandsSeemsEyeActionAnimalHugeHairBearsKingsUglyAwkwardImitationMonkeysBrutesApesResemblancePawsHuman Hands
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)
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“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!”

KnowsMenMovingAliveOrdinaryTwentiesTheeDisgustingFamiliarityDead ManTombstoneTruismI Am AliveLecturing
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)
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“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.”

BelieveChildrenSometimesNamesPoorExistenceCreaturesCharitySevenTheeStringsDistressAssistancePursesSmall ChildUnwelcomeBowelsRakes
Book:The Essays of Elia
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“Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.”

LittlesPersonsFeelingsAttentionKnowingGreaterObjectsCreaturesFellowsDenyInventionSuperiorsEsteemPreferenceCeremonyEndeavourUneasyUneasy Feelings
Author:Charles Lamb
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“Surely it is a matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with bitterness and made druken with wormwood, I conjre you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God and your God,' the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven.”

KnowsShouldHas BeensMadeMatterChristianJoyMotherFatherJesusNamesHeavenPrayerPoorDivineComfortMercyInstrumentsFilledUnconsciousBitternessProvidenceCalamitySaviourRecourseComforterDivine ProvidenceFaith In JesusWormwood
Book:The Letters of Charles Lamb: To which are Added Those of His Sister, Mary Lamb. Edited by E.V. Lucas
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“I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!”

PainSoundAttentionMusicStreetsEndlessSatItalianOperaSheerAnguishTormentObligedCrowdedSolaceBarrenInexplicableCrowded Streets
Book:The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb
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