43 Quotes & Sayings By Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb was a major figure in the transition from the 18th century to the 19th. He is a well-known figure in British literary history. He was born in 1775 and died in 1834. His father was well-to-do, and he enjoyed a comfortable upbringing, but his education was sketchy Read more

In 1795 he left home and enrolled at Cambridge University as a sizar, which meant that he paid his way by working as a servant for a fellow student or fellow sizar. He became quite popular at Cambridge due to his good looks and wit, and soon began to write poems and essays for the press. Lamb's first volume of poetry, The Tears of the Muses (1801), is a sentimental celebration of youthful love.

Lamb's talent was recognized early on by Coleridge, who called him "the modern Pindar." In 1802 Lamb moved to London and joined the group known as the ABCs (after Kemble), which included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Thomas De Quincey, Joseph Cottle, John Howard Payne, Henry Kirke Whitehead, Charles Lloyd, James Kinsley, John Williams Parry (who also wrote under his own name), Robert Bloomfield (music critic), William Hazlitt (journalist), Charles Lamb became famous with his second volume of poetry, The Vision of Delight (1810). His friends helped him get established at London's coffee houses while he continued writing poetry for journals like the London Magazine. It was while at one of these gatherings that Lamb met Coleridge again after years of not seeing each other.

The two became close friends over time and collaborated on some projects together. With Coleridge's help Lamb produced his most famous works--Poetical Works (1815) and Biographia Literaria (1817). These works were years in the making; it took over 20 years for them to come to fruition.

From 1804 until his death in 1834 Lamb lived with Wordsworth's sister Dorothy along with Wordsworth's wife Sara Fricker and their daughter Mary. This gave him access to many great friendships among artists like William Blake and Leigh Hunt; poets like William Hazlitt; writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge; philosophers like Thomas Carlyle; scientists like Humphry Davy; politicians like John Stuart Mill; painters like George Romney; naturalists like Thomas Bewick;

I always arrive late at the office, but I make...
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I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. Charles Lamb
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books...
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I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me. Charles Lamb
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to...
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Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected. Charles Lamb
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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. Charles Lamb
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There is more reason to say grace before beginning a book than there is to say it before beginning to dine. Charles Lamb
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Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. Charles Lamb
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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. Charles Lamb
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Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling? Charles Lamb
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Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart. Charles Lamb
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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! Charles Lamb
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The young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. Charles Lamb
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We do not go (to the theatre) like our ancestors to escape from the pressure of reality so much as to confirm our experience of it. Charles Lamb
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Nothing puzzles me more than time and space yet nothing troubles me less. Charles Lamb
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Books think for me. Charles Lamb
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If dirt was trumps what hands you would hold! Charles Lamb
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The most mortifying infirmity in human nature ... is perhaps cowardice. Charles Lamb
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I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. Charles Lamb
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Here cometh April again and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever. Charles Lamb
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'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense and have her nonsense respected. Charles Lamb
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Man is a gaming animal. Charles Lamb
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The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to have it found out by accident. Charles Lamb
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New Year's Day is every man's birthday. Charles Lamb
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Man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other. Charles Lamb
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The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. Charles Lamb
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Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral. Charles Lamb
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To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Charles Lamb
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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! Charles Lamb
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Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony but organically I am incapable of a tune. Charles Lamb
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In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces. Charles Lamb
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Riches are chiefly good because they give us time. Charles Lamb
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I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. Charles Lamb
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He might have proved a useful adjunct if not an ornament to society. Charles Lamb
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Neat not gaudy. Charles Lamb
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We all have some taste or other of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering that it was an acquired one. Charles Lamb
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The only true time which a man can properly call his own is that which he has all to himself the rest though in some sense he may be said to live it is other people's time not his. Charles Lamb
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For thy sake tobacco I Would do anything but die. Charles Lamb
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Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space and yet nothing troubles me less. Charles Lamb
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The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. Charles Lamb
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The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking. Charles Lamb
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Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected. Charles Lamb
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Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. Charles Lamb
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He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. Charles Lamb