"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."

"From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me."

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

"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."

"The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture."

"A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect."

"If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance."

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

"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."

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

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

"It argues an insensibility."

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

"Presents, I often say, endear absents."

"It is good to love the unknown."

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

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

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

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

"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!"

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

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

"I have no ear."

"Books think for me."

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

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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.""

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

"Neat, not gaudy."

"Things in books' clothing."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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"

"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."

"Not if I know myself at all."

"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?"

"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."