Charles Lamb Quotes

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days – All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.

New Year‘s Day is every man‘s birthday.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

I love to lose myself in other men‘s minds.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.

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.

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

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

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.

She unbent her mind afterwards – over a book.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.

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.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

I’d like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

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.

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.