Top 200 Charles Lamb Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.”

— Charles Lamb

102. “Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby’s daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea.”

— Charles Lamb

103. “Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.”

— Charles Lamb

104. “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.”

— Charles Lamb

105. “Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?”

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

107. “Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!”

— Charles Lamb

108. “Fly not yet; ’t is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.”

— Charles Lamb

109. “Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge.”

— Charles Lamb

110. “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading, I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.”

— Charles Lamb

111. “There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.”

— Charles Lamb

112. “You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!”

— Charles Lamb

113. “And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.”

— Charles Lamb

114. “By myself walking, To myself talking.”

— Charles Lamb

115. “We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.”

— Charles Lamb

116. “This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.”

— Charles Lamb

117. “Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime!”

— Charles Lamb

118. “I conceive disgust at these impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstone.”

— Charles Lamb

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

— Charles Lamb

120. “A child’s nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.”

— Charles Lamb

121. “Since all the maids are good and lovable, from whence come the bad wives?”

— Charles Lamb

122. “I give thee all,-I can no more, Though poor the off’ring be; My heart and lute are all the store That I can bring to thee.”

— Charles Lamb

123. “My only books Were woman’s looks,- And folly ’s all they ’ve taught me.”

— Charles Lamb

124. “While childhood, and while dreams, producing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.”

— Charles Lamb

125. “I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.”

— Charles Lamb

126. “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.”

— Charles Lamb

127. “There was a little man, and he had a little soul; And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!”

— Charles Lamb

128. “Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour’d his relics are laid.”

— Charles Lamb

129. “We encourage one another in mediocrity.”

— Charles Lamb

130. “Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty’s war, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.”

— Charles Lamb

131. “Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.”

— Charles Lamb

132. “You look wise, pray correct that error.”

— Charles Lamb

133. “I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.”

— Charles Lamb

134. “O money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou are health and liberty and strength, and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!”

— Charles Lamb

135. “Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”

— Charles Lamb

136. “Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o’er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!”

— Charles Lamb

137. “How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

— Charles Lamb

138. “Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold.”

— Charles Lamb

139. “It is with some violation of the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage.”

— Charles Lamb

140. “The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.”

— Charles Lamb

141. “I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.”

— Charles Lamb

142. “Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved.”

— Charles Lamb

143. “She unbent her mind afterwards – over a book.”

— Charles Lamb

144. “Our spirits grow gray before our hairs.”

— Charles Lamb

145. “A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

— Charles Lamb

146. “In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice.”

— Charles Lamb

147. “We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey – somehow as we are shy of poor relations.”

— Charles Lamb

148. “Who has not felt how sadly sweet The dream of home, the dream of home, Steals o’er the heart, too soon to fleet, When far o’er sea or land we roam?”

— Charles Lamb

149. “The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.”

— Charles Lamb

150. “Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears.”

— Charles Lamb