Quote

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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Charles Lamb
Age: 59 †
Born: 1775
Born: February 10
Died: 1834
Died: December 27
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
London
England
Life
Nothing
Operative
Much
Contemplative
Long
Altogether
Believe
Element
Never
Son
Would
Elements
Men
Littles
Time
Little
Verily

More quotes by 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.
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Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.
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.
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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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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
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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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Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
Charles Lamb
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The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
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To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
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Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?
Charles Lamb
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Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Charles Lamb
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The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.
Charles Lamb
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Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.
Charles Lamb
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The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling - a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.
Charles Lamb
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Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.
Charles Lamb
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Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold.
Charles Lamb
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Dream not ... of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!
Charles Lamb
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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
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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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Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Charles Lamb