CHARLES LAMB QUOTES IV

English essayist and critic (1775-1834)

Books think for me.

CHARLES LAMB

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading", Last Essays of Elia


Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him.

CHARLES LAMB

"Decay of Beggars", Elia

Tags: charity


What a place to be is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours ... were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets.

CHARLES LAMB

Elia and the Last Essays of Elia

Tags: libraries


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.

CHARLES LAMB

"The Two Races of Men", Essays of Elia

Tags: borrowing, lending


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 acquisition.

CHARLES LAMB

"The Old and the New Schoolmaster", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia

Tags: knowledge


A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oct. 11, 1802


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

letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oct. 23, 1802