Top 200 Charles Lamb Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”

— Charles Lamb

Featured in: Hilarious Quotes

2. “My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.”

— Charles Lamb

3. “Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

— Charles Lamb

4. “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

— Charles Lamb

5. “He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”

— Charles Lamb

6. “New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.”

— Charles Lamb

7. “A poor relation – is the most irrelevant thing in nature.”

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

9. “Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.”

— Charles Lamb

10. “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

11. “No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself, – the most unwholesome of food.”

— Charles Lamb

12. “We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.”

— Charles Lamb

13. “Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,- One minute of heaven is worth them all.”

— Charles Lamb

14. “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

— Charles Lamb

15. “My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.”

— Charles Lamb

16. “Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.”

— Charles Lamb

17. “Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.”

— Charles Lamb

18. “May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.”

— Charles Lamb

19. “I am in love with this green Earth.”

— Charles Lamb

20. “How I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked!”

— Charles Lamb

21. “Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.”

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

23. “Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.”

— Charles Lamb

24. “Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.”

— Charles Lamb

25. “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.”

— Charles Lamb

26. “The true poet dreams being awake.”

— Charles Lamb

27. “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

28. “For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.”

— Charles Lamb

29. “Half as sober as a judge.”

— Charles Lamb

30. “Don’t introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can’t hate a man whom I know.”

— Charles Lamb

31. “May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome, two pipes toothsome, three pipes noisome, four pipes fulsome, five pipes quarrelsome; and that’s the some on’t.”

— Charles Lamb

32. “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

33. “When thus the heart is in a vein Of tender thought, the simplest strain Can touch it with peculiar power.”

— Charles Lamb

34. “A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of non pertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity.”

— Charles Lamb

35. “A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.”

— Charles Lamb

36. “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

37. “When true hearts lie wither’d And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone?”

— Charles Lamb

38. “Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?”

— Charles Lamb

39. “A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.”

— Charles Lamb

40. “Mother’s love grows by giving.”

— Charles Lamb

41. “You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.”

— Charles Lamb

42. “A babe is fed with milk and praise.”

— Charles Lamb

43. “Damn the age. I’ll write for antiquity.”

— Charles Lamb

44. “Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.”

— Charles Lamb

45. “There are like to be short graces where the devil plays host.”

— Charles Lamb

46. “Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded.”

— Charles Lamb

47. “If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there!”

— Charles Lamb

48. “We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been...”

— Charles Lamb

49. “As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances, May that side the sun ’s upon Be all that e’er shall meet thy glances!”

— Charles Lamb

50. “Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.”

— Charles Lamb