Charles Lamb Quotes

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

Far transcend my weak invention.
’Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her store of script’ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say Our Father To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart.

I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further...God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!

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

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

Atheists, or Deists only in the name, By word or deed deny a God. They eat Their daily bread, & draw the breath of heaven, Without a thought or thanks; heav'n's roof to them Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, No more, that light them to their purposes. They 'wander loose about.' They nothing see, Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save. So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,' Or like a dream of murder in the night, Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking The bones of all their pride.

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.

He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

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

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.

Aveva trovato un piacere bizzarro, si rifiutava di chiamarlo una virtù, nel prendersi cura di quel tipo di persone che avevano da lungo tempo cessato di aspettarsi gentilezza o amicizia dagli uomini, ma si accontentavano di accettare i riluttanti servigi che gli strumenti e i dipendenti, spesso insensibili, di quelle benintenzionate istituzioni somministrano ai poveri ammalati sotto loro tutela.
Non sono medicine, brodi e carne dura, servite ad ore fisse con tutte le rigide formalità di una prigione - non è l'autosufficiente elemosina di un letto su cui morire - ciò che l'uomo in punto di morte si aspetta dai suoi simili.
Sguardi, attenzioni, consolazioni - in una parola solidarietà, è ciò di cui un uomo ha più bisogno al terribile chiudersi delle sue sofferenze mortali. Uno sguardo gentile, un sorriso, una goccia di acqua fredda per le labbra rinsecchite - per queste cose un uomo vi benedirà nella morte.