Charles Lamb Men Quotations

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed.

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.

Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

I hate the man who eats without knowing what he’s eating. I doubt his taste in more important things.

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

A man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings.

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?

The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"

There was a little man, and he had a little soul; And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!

Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved.

Dr Parr...asked him, how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, 'I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.'

Man is a gaming animal.

A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.

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.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.

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.

The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.

From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.

I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.

I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.

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.

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.

Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

Science has succeeded to poetry, no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?

The vices of some men are magnificent.

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.

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!

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.

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.

It is rather an unpleasant fact, that the ugliest and awkwardest of brute animals have the greatest resemblance to man: the monkey and the bear. The monkey is ugly too (so we think) because he is like man--as the bear is awkward, because the cumbrous action of its huge paws seems to be a preposterous imitation of the motions of human hands. Men and apes are the only animals that have hairs on the under eye-lid. Let kings know this.

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.

Trample not on the ruins of a man.