Charles Lamb

When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

Pain is life -- the sharper, the more evidence of life.

Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.

Lawyers I suppose were children once.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

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

Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

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

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.