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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

“I cannot sit and think; books think for me.”

Thinking Book Reading

Book:The Essays of Elia and Eliana

Source: The Essays of Elia and Eliana

“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.”

Needs Reading Ears Solemn Milton Docile

Book:Essays of Elia

Source: Essays of Elia

“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?”

Thinking Book Reading Five Minutes Ready Depends Six Dinner Queens Volume Sermons Impatient Bishops Faerie Andrew

Author:Charles Lamb

“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?”

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

“When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.”

Thinking Reading Walking

Book:Elia

Source: Elia

“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.”

Knows Long Has Beens Book Reading Known Dog Ears Tea Reading Books Dirt Book Reading Bookstores Muffins Topography

Book:The Essays of Elia

Source: The Essays of Elia

“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.”