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Charles Lamb Quotes

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Charles Lamb (February 10, 1775 - December 27, 1834) was an English writer known for his essays and literary criticism. Lamb is celebrated for his unique sense of humor and profound insights into everyday life. His most famous works include 'Elias Ward' and 'The Tales of a Grandfather'.

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Famous Charles Lamb Quotes

“Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.”

Ifs Character Mines Reader Wit Nerves Gifted Aspire

Book:Essays of Elia

Source: Essays of Elia

“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.”

Ifs Men Feels Wells Littles Doe Pure Surface Devotion Good Man Altars Steam Sensuous Clouded Mingling

Author:Charles Lamb

“Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.”

Ifs Painful Deny Pockets Beggar

Book:The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Miscellaneous Prose

Source: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Miscellaneous Prose

“If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!”

Ifs Hands Trump Dirt

Author:Charles Lamb

“A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.”

Ifs Doe Book Brother Return Demand Sells Stranger Foolish Copies Presentation Autographs

Author:Charles Lamb

“If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there!”

Ifs Lord Solitude Bed Sick Patient Sickness Regal

Book:Essays of Elia: To which are Added Letters, and Rosamund

Source: Essays of Elia: To which are Added Letters, and Rosamund

“What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance.”

Source: A complete Elia: The essays of Elia, together with The last essays of Elia

“The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.”

Ifs Knows Law Differences Boys Kings Kingdoms Managers Shade Passages Candle Cheeks Departed Ignoble Pluto Cobblers Small Differences

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)

“I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.”

Ifs Children Father Religious Determined My Children I Am Determined

Book:The letters of Charles Lamb: to which are added those of his sister Mary Lamb

Source: The letters of Charles Lamb: to which are added those of his sister Mary Lamb

“Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.”

Ifs Blessed Irony Veins Clapping

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

Source: 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

“Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!”

Ifs Thinking Has Beens Natural Wife Childhood Tales Fairy Feds Fairy Tale Geography Fairytale Fables Natural History

Book:The Works of Charles Lamb: To which are Prefixed, His Letters, and a Sketch of His Life

Source: The Works of Charles Lamb: To which are Prefixed, His Letters, and a Sketch of His Life

“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.”