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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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Charles Lamb
Age: 59 †
Born: 1775
Born: February 10
Died: 1834
Died: December 27
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
London
England
Make
Party
Remainder
Friends
Alphabet
Common
Link
Away
Links
Part
Precious
Doe
Loses
Going
Takes
Sickens
Much
Dies
Subtraction

More quotes by Charles Lamb

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I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library.
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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Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
Charles Lamb
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There are like to be short graces where the devil plays host.
Charles Lamb
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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
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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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Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!
Charles Lamb
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This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven.
Charles Lamb
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Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
Charles Lamb
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Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!
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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Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Charles Lamb
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If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!
Charles Lamb
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For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
Charles Lamb
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Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.
Charles Lamb
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Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.
Charles Lamb
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A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.
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 sigh, yet feel no pain To weep, yet scarce know why To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by.
Charles Lamb