Quotes from Charles Lamb

Time partially reconciles us to anything.

That Enough Is As Good As a Feast' ...The inventor of [this saying] did not believe it himself....Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalise with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us.

oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.

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.

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

Lawyers, I suppose were once children.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel ; perpetually changing postures and connexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational, antipathies of the great French and English nations.

Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, and then burn the world? There is a March of Science. But who shall beat the drums, for its retreat?

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

Beware the man of one book. He sleeps in his armour.

I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his com position.

Adriana had so well profited by the good counsel of her mother-in-law, that she never after cherished unjust suspicions, or was jealous of her husband.[Pg 189]

Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool.

I don't envy the mule his labyrinthine inlets, those indispensable side-intelligencers.

I am sentimentally disposed to harmony but organically incapable of tune.

Put away from you this unfounded grief; only let it be a lesson to you to be as kind as possible to those you love; and remember, when they are gone from you, you will never think you had been kind enough.

but I see the resentments of the dead are eternal.

Rich seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves!

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

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!

Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.