Charles Lamb 1775-1834 John Bartlett


1
The red-letter days now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
Oxford in the Vacation.
2
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
Oxford in the Vacation.
3
A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.
Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist.
4
Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.
A Chapter on Ears.
5
Not if I know myself at all.
The Old and New Schoolmaster.
6
It is good to love the unknown.
Valentine’s Day.
7
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.
My First Play.
8
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.
9
It argues an insensibility.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.
10
Books which are no books.
Detached Thoughts on Books.



11
Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
Amicus Redivivus.
12
Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.
Hester. Stanza 7.
13
I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Old Familiar Faces.
14
For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die.
A Farewell to Tobacco.
15
And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.
Written at Cambridge.
16
Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . . . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk’s dead wood? . . . . . . . . . Sabbathless Satan!
Work.
17
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.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
18
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.
Captain Starkey.
19
Neat, not gaudy. 1
Letter to Wordsworth, 1806.
20
Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
Lamb’s Suppers.
21
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman’s guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, “Are you full inside?” Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, “I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman’s did the business for me.”
Autobiographical Recollections. (Leslie.)

Note 1.
See Shakespeare, Hamlet, Quotation 46. [back]

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