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

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
Thing
Good
Men
Positively
Works
Perhaps
Next
Best
Nothing

More quotes by 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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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
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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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Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.
Charles Lamb
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Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.
Charles Lamb
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The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: I hate that man. But you don't know him. Of course, I don't, said Lamb. Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?
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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I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature.
Charles Lamb
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The true poet dreams being awake.
Charles Lamb
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English physicians kill you, the French let you die.
Charles Lamb
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Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.
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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Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Charles Lamb
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Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.
Charles Lamb
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My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me.
Charles Lamb
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Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
Charles Lamb
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No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.
Charles Lamb
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I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.
Charles Lamb
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It is good to love the unknown.
Charles Lamb
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May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.
Charles Lamb