No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. Charles Lamb More Quotes by Charles Lamb More Quotes From Charles Lamb Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. Charles Lamb wild-animal cages animal 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 men believe son Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea. Charles Lamb daughter farewell dark If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold! Charles Lamb trump dirt hands I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature?but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. Charles Lamb kind sweet children Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it--how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all. Charles Lamb wife eye men 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 knowing feelings attention So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. Charles Lamb littles sometimes men No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice. Charles Lamb caprice mere dresses I even think that, sentimentally, I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. Charles Lamb music tunes thinking Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. Charles Lamb truism observation commonplace I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! Charles Lamb tombstone men moving Trample not on the ruins of a man. Charles Lamb ruins men It is with some violation of the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage. Charles Lamb imagination mind character The true poet dreams being awake. Charles Lamb poet poetry dream I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. Charles Lamb scottish despair trying We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one. Charles Lamb ancient taste remember Opinions is a species of property - I am always desirous of sharing. Charles Lamb property species opinion A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! Charles Lamb distance sublime doors Half as sober as a judge. Charles Lamb sober half judging
