Quote

Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.

Charles Lamb

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Lamb
Age: 59 †
Born: 1775
Born: February 10
Died: 1834
Died: December 27
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
London
England
Nothing
Thing
Good
Men
Positively
Works
Perhaps
Next
Best

More quotes by Charles Lamb

Image
We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one.
Charles Lamb
Image
Philanthropy, like charity, must begin at home.
Charles Lamb
Image
I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library.
Charles Lamb
Image
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
Charles Lamb
Image
A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made: 'T is but black eyes and lemonade.
Charles Lamb
Image
I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices - made up of likings and dislikings.
Charles Lamb
Image
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
Charles Lamb
Image
I could never hate anyone I knew.
Charles Lamb
Image
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
Image
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
Charles Lamb
Image
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
Image
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.
Charles Lamb
Image
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.
Charles Lamb
Image
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
Image
A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.
Charles Lamb
Image
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.
Charles Lamb
Image
English physicians kill you, the French let you die.
Charles Lamb
Image
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
Image
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?
Charles Lamb
Image
We are nothing less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.
Charles Lamb