Quote

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

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Charles Lamb
Age: 59 †
Born: 1775
Born: February 10
Died: 1834
Died: December 27
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
London
England
Nothing
Mediocrity
Always
Association
Men
Encourage
Longing
Excellent
Gain
Gains
Another

More quotes by Charles Lamb

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The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
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Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!
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Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!
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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?
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The world meets nobody half way.
Charles Lamb
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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.
Charles Lamb
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You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!
Charles Lamb
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Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.
Charles Lamb
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Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.
Charles Lamb
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To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice.
Charles Lamb
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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.
Charles Lamb
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If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!
Charles Lamb
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By myself walking, To myself talking.
Charles Lamb
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In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces.
Charles Lamb
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I conceive disgust at these impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstone.
Charles Lamb
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Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.
Charles Lamb
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The true poet dreams being awake.
Charles Lamb
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A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.
Charles Lamb
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Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed.
Charles Lamb
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It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar surface.
Charles Lamb