Charles Lamb
Charles Lamb
Charles Lambwas an English writer and essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth10 February 1775
understanding mind topics
This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.
observation truism commonplace
Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.
men vices magnificent
The vices of some men are magnificent.
friendship mountain care
Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.
hair enthusiasm spirit
Our spirits grow gray before our hairs.
moving fall heart
Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.
hate
I could never hate anyone I knew.
art past looks
Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!
family irrelevance poor
A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.
voice zion cheerful
The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard, Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims Tidings of good to Zion.
festivals red purpose
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
character men people
I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.
home charity philanthropy
Philanthropy, like charity, must begin at home.
bravery might tongue
Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!