Henry Crabb Robinson

"In a certain sense, many of us mutilate the mind and render it impotent, for there is in the nature of man an irresistible tendency to religion; it is founded in our wants and passions, in the extent of our faculties, in the quality of mind itself. 's description of the untired soul darting from world to world, is a noble image of the restless longing of the mind after God and immortality. The stronger his sensibility, the more exalted his imagination, the more pious will every man be. And in this inherent and essential quality of our minds can we alone account for the various absurd and demonstrably false dogmas believed so honestly and zealously by some. Men run headlong into superstition in the same way as young boys and girls run into matrimony."

"Lamb had written to Coleridge about one of their old masters, who had been a severe disciplinarian, intimating that he hoped Coleridge had forgiven all injuries. Coleridge replied that he certainly had; he hoped his soul was in heaven, and that when he went there he was borne by a host of cherubs, all face and wing, and without anything to excite his whipping propensities!"

"Dined at Gooden’s, where I met among others , the Secretary of the . He surprised me by saying that he knew Goethe only as a botanist, in which character he thought most highly of him, he being the author of the New System of Botany; and that this is now the opinion of the most eminent botanists both in France and England. I rejoice at this unexpected intelligence."

"Lamb was the first English writer of eminence whom Crabb Robinson tried to convince of the excellence of Goethe."