Charles Lamb Quotes

For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print... Substitute drunken dog, ragged head, self-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.

Philanthropy, like charity, must begin at home.

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

Borrowers of books -- those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

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

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts -- a grace before Milton, a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading [Spenser]?

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.