Charles Lamb

"Oaths fell from his mouth with a gentleness and sweetness which the blessings of other men cannot reach. His essays of Elia are full of this bright humour, this tender criticism. A ripple of tender laughter rips through them, just broke here and there by a sob."

"Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations."

"Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it ..."

"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."

"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."

"The mixture spoils two good things, as Charles Lamb (Elia) used to say of brandy and water."

"Surely it is a matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with bitterness and made druken with wormwood, I conjre you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God and your God,' the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven."

"Severe and saintly righteousness Composed the clear white bridal dress; Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King Bought with his blood the marriage ring"

"In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb The delicate sense and most divine repose Of spiritus angelical Blessed be God, The measure of his judgments is not fixed By man's erroneous standard. He discerns No such inordinate difference and vast Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, No man on earth is holy called: they best Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield, To him of his own works the praise, his due."

"Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart."

"MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. —With me “the former things are passed away,” and I have something more to do that [than] to feel. God almighty have us all in his keeping."

"I have something more to do than to feel."

"I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further...God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!"

"Atheists, or Deists only in the name, By word or deed deny a God. They eat Their daily bread, & draw the breath of heaven, Without a thought or thanks; heav'n's roof to them Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, No more, that light them to their purposes. They 'wander loose about.' They nothing see, Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save. So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,' Or like a dream of murder in the night, Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking The bones of all their pride."

"I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."

"For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print."

"Please to blot out gentle hearted, and substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-ey'd, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the Gentleman in question."

"Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life."

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

"Nursed amid her [London's] noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?"

"Gone before To that unknown and silent shore."

"A good-natured woman...which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor."

"Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral."

"This very night I am going to leave off Tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized."

"[Of Coleridge] His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged."

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

"Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."

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

"The flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry"

"I came home for ever!"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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?"

"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"

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

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

"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."

"Not if I know myself at all."

"And half had staggered that stout Stagirite."

"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."

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

"Neat, not gaudy."

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

"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.""

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

"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."

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