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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
Nothing
Thing
Good
Men
Positively
Works
Perhaps
Next
Best

More quotes by Charles Lamb

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Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.
Charles Lamb
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The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.
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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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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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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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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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
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When twilight dews are falling soft Upon the rosy sea, love, I watch the star whose beam so oft Has lighted me to thee, love.
Charles Lamb
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There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.
Charles Lamb
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A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions.
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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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
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To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
Charles Lamb
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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
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English physicians kill you, the French let you die.
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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Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosom of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments?
Charles Lamb
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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
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Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
Charles Lamb
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No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
Charles Lamb