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
waiting remember glory
Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!
taste remember ancient
We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one.
errand riddle short thy visit
Riddle of destiny, who can show / What thy short visit meant, or know / What thy errand here below?
common count date january nativity regarded
No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.
abundance alley bargains blest blind cannot cause children commonly consider defeat few fond hopes life marriages people poorest possibly pride rarity street taking turn vicious
When I consider how little of a rarity children are / that every street and blind alley swarms with them / that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance / that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains / how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. / I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.
music thinking tunes
I even think that, sentimentally, I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.
dresses caprice mere
No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.
children believe names
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him.
men ruins
Trample not on the ruins of a man.
pleasure
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.
animal cages wild-animal
Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.
believe son men
A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.
kings eye men
It is rather an unpleasant fact, that the ugliest and awkwardest of brute animals have the greatest resemblance to man: the monkey and the bear. The monkey is ugly too (so we think) because he is like man--as the bear is awkward, because the cumbrous action of its huge paws seems to be a preposterous imitation of the motions of human hands. Men and apes are the only animals that have hairs on the under eye-lid. Let kings know this.
eye men wife
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.