110+ Charles Lamb Quotes On Religion, Education And World

Charles Lamb was an English critic and essayist from the Romantic period. He is best known for his work Essays of Elia, which contains a collection of humorous essays written in the style of an alter ego, Elia. He also wrote a number of poems, plays, and stories, and was a close friend of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Charles Lamb on life, religion, education.

Top 10 Charles Lamb Quotes

1. The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
2. Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
3. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
4. I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
5. How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
6. My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
7. A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.
8. How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?
9. For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.
10. The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Charles Lamb Image Quotes

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. — Charles Lamb

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. — Charles Lamb

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Short Quotes

• Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
• Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.
• Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.
• The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.
• Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
• Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
• May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.
• He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
• How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!
• Brandy and water spoils two good things.

Charles Lamb Quotes About Life

Pain is life -- the sharper, the more evidence of life. — Charles Lamb

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. — Charles Lamb

The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. — Charles Lamb

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

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life. — Charles Lamb

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. — Charles Lamb

It is with some violation of the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About Love

I am in love with this green Earth. — Charles Lamb

Mother's love grows by giving. — Charles Lamb

Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die. — Charles Lamb

Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon. — Charles Lamb

Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken. — Charles Lamb

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me. — Charles Lamb

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. — Charles Lamb

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me. — Charles Lamb

We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies. — Charles Lamb

Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About World

This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven. — Charles Lamb

Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosom of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments? — Charles Lamb

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised. — Charles Lamb

The world meets nobody half way. — Charles Lamb

In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married couple; in that of the lady particularly; it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes for her. — Charles Lamb

When true hearts lie wither'd And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone? — Charles Lamb

I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself. — Charles Lamb

Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About Coleridge

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity. — Charles Lamb

Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion. — Charles Lamb

Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About One

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. — Charles Lamb

No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. — Charles Lamb

We encourage one another in mediocrity. — Charles Lamb

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment. — Charles Lamb

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking. — Charles Lamb

Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species. — Charles Lamb

We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,- One minute of heaven is worth them all. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About Children

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. — Charles Lamb

A sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature. — Charles Lamb

I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them. — Charles Lamb

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is. — Charles Lamb

I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature?but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. — Charles Lamb

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. — Charles Lamb

Lawyers I suppose were children once. — Charles Lamb

A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being. — Charles Lamb

Science has succeeded to poetry, no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? — Charles Lamb

While childhood, and while dreams, producing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About People

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. — Charles Lamb

All people have their blind side-their superstitions. — Charles Lamb

The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is 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. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About Books

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. — Charles Lamb

My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me. — Charles Lamb

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author. — Charles Lamb

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons? — Charles Lamb

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

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. — Charles Lamb

A presentation copy...is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return. — Charles Lamb

I cannot sit and think; books think for me. — Charles Lamb

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book. — Charles Lamb

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Quotes About Book

Books think for me. I can read anything which I call a book. — Charles Lamb

I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves. — Charles Lamb

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding. — Charles Lamb

Books which are no books. — Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb Famous Quotes And Sayings

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. — Charles Lamb

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. — Charles Lamb

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more. — Charles Lamb

Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime! — Charles Lamb

The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. — Charles Lamb

Dr Parr...asked him, how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, 'I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.' — Charles Lamb

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! — Charles Lamb

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them. — Charles Lamb

Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree? — Charles Lamb

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it. — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Lamb

For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord. — Charles Lamb

How often you are irresistibly drawn to a plain, unassuming woman, whose soft silvery tones render her positively attractive! In the social circle, how pleasant it is to hear a woman talk in that low key which always characterizes the true lady. In the sanctuary of home, how such a voice soothes the fretful child and cheers the weary husband! — Charles Lamb

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

A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade. — Charles Lamb

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives. — Charles Lamb

The beggar wears all colors fearing none. — Charles Lamb

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

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. — Charles Lamb

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there! — Charles Lamb

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. — Charles Lamb

Man is a gaming animal. — Charles Lamb

Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold. — Charles Lamb

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick. — Charles Lamb

To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness. — Charles Lamb

A babe is fed with milk and praise. — Charles Lamb

Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid — Charles Lamb

His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with. — Charles Lamb

Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. — Charles Lamb

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell. — Charles Lamb

A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. — Charles Lamb

Half as sober as a judge. — Charles Lamb

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street. — Charles Lamb

Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. — Charles Lamb

Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me! — Charles Lamb

I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from. — Charles Lamb

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue. — Charles Lamb

To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice. — Charles Lamb

Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone. — Charles Lamb

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. — Charles Lamb

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. — Charles Lamb

You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself! — Charles Lamb

The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever. — Charles Lamb

A flow'ret crushed in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, Was in her cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying — Charles Lamb

The vices of some men are magnificent. — Charles Lamb

I could never hate anyone I knew. — Charles Lamb

I conceive disgust at these impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstone. — Charles Lamb

I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. — Charles Lamb

The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more. — Charles Lamb

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. — Charles Lamb

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling? — Charles Lamb

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time. — Charles Lamb

'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected. — Charles Lamb

A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! — Charles Lamb

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . Sabbathless Satan! — Charles Lamb

Oh, the pleasure of eating my dinner alone! — Charles Lamb

Life Lessons by Charles Lamb

1. Charles Lamb taught the importance of living life with a sense of humor and joy, rather than taking it too seriously.
2. He also reminded us to appreciate the small things in life, and to never take our loved ones for granted.
3. Lastly, he encouraged us to use our imagination and creativity to find beauty in the everyday world around us.