1775-1834, British Essayist, Critic
'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
Charles Lamb – [Friends and Friendship]
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
Charles Lamb – [Laughter]
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
Charles Lamb – [Family]
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Charles Lamb – [Puns]
Borrowers of books –those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Charles Lamb – [Books and Reading]
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Charles Lamb – [Boys]
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Charles Lamb – [Cards]
Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.
Charles Lamb – [Attitude]
For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print… substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.
Charles Lamb – [Reputation]
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
Charles Lamb – [Books and Reading]
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Charles Lamb – [Law and Lawyers]
How a sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated in him as his only duty,
Charles Lamb – [Selfishness]
I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.
Charles Lamb – [Books and Reading]
In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.
Charles Lamb – [Science and Scientists]
Lawyers I suppose were children once.
Charles Lamb – [Law and Lawyers]
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Charles Lamb – [Competition]
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
Charles Lamb – [Contentment]
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
Charles Lamb – [Newspapers]
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.
Charles Lamb – [Cosmos]
Pain is life — the sharper, the more evidence of life.
Charles Lamb – [Pain]