"She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. "Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God."

"His own image; no longer a dark, gray bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful and beautiful swan. To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg."

"Death continued to stare at the emperor with his cold, hollow eyes, and the room was fearfully still. Suddenly there came through the open window the sound of sweet music. Outside, on the bough of a tree, sat the living nightingale. She had heard of the emperor's illness, and was therefore come to sing to him of hope and trust. And as she sung, the shadows grew paler and paler; the blood in the emperor's veins flowed more rapidly, and gave life to his weak limbs; and even Death himself listened, and said, "Go on, little nightingale, go on.""

"We sometimes live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love. We have not immortal souls,because Estelle is a star and we shall never live again; but, like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see."

""But he has nothing on at all," said a little child at last. "Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child," said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. "But he has nothing on at all," cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, "Now I must bear up to the end." And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist."

"Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects."

"Things in books' clothing."

"Books think for me."

"When I am not walking, I am reading;"

"I love to lose myself in other men's minds."

"A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature."

"It argues an insensibility."

"Presents, I often say, endear absents."

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

"It is good to love the unknown."

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

"Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength."

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

"Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune."

"I have no ear."

"A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game."

"I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!"

"Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes."

"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."

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

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

"Stinking’st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite—"

"Thou through such a mist dost show us, That our best friends do not know us."

"Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, through thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem."

"Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you."

"For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die."

"For I hate, yet love thee, so, That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed."

"Riches are chiefly good because they give us time."

"Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me.""

"Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!"

"Neat, not gaudy."

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

"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."

"And half had staggered that stout Stagirite."

"Not if I know myself at all."

"The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy."

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

"He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides."

"Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust, Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping"

"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?"

"Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, nor for Handel."

"When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!'"

"Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?"

"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."

"A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state)—it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better."