Quotes by Charles Lamb

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologue of the first world. Adam could scare have missed it in Paradise.

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

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.

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

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!

My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me.

Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.

He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.