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Charles Lamb Quotes - Page 11

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The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

Charles Lamb
Men, Recipes, Dull
Letter to Thomas Manning, 15 February 1802 (quoting from 'The Londoner', no. 1), in E. Marrs (ed.) 'The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb' vol. 2 (1976) p. 57

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.

Charles Lamb
Book, Mind
'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'Mrs Battle's Opinions on Whist'

A flow'ret crushed in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, Was in her cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying

Charles Lamb
Lying, Dying, Coffins
Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (1838). “The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb”, p.182

Is it a stale remark to say that I have constantly found the interest excited at a playhouse to bear an exact inverse proportion to the price paid for admission?

Charles Lamb
Acting, Bears, Excited
Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)”, p.1278, Delphi Classics

I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four without ease or interposition ... these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk!

Charles Lamb
Wall, Tired, Air
Charles Lamb, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1838). “The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works”, p.196

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?

Charles Lamb
Queens, Book, Reading

Books think for me. I can read anything which I call a book.

Charles Lamb
Book, Thinking, I Can Read

No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.

Charles Lamb
Dresses, Caprice, Mere

Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

Charles Lamb
Observation, Truism, Commonplace
Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.159, Cosimo, Inc.

Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it--how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all.

Charles Lamb
Eye, Men, Wife
Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (1913). “Miscellaneous prose (1798-1834)”

Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.