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
Always
Association
Men
Encourage
Longing
Excellent
Gain
Gains
Another
Nothing
Mediocrity

More quotes by Charles Lamb

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You may derive thoughts from others your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.
Charles Lamb
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The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is that which he has all to himself the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his.
Charles Lamb
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I cannot sit and think books think for me.
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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
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The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard, Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims Tidings of good to Zion.
Charles Lamb
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I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library.
Charles Lamb
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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.
Charles Lamb
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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
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The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.
Charles Lamb
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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!
Charles Lamb
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You look wise, pray correct that error.
Charles Lamb
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A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.
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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For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
Charles Lamb
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We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
Charles Lamb
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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
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The vices of some men are magnificent.
Charles Lamb
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How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.
Charles Lamb
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There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.
Charles Lamb
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I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!
Charles Lamb