Charles Lamb - biography

“I’d like to grow very old as slowly as possible.”

“We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.”

“New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.”

“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.”

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

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

“Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.”

“She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.”

“We read to say that we have read.”

“What is reading, but silent conversation.”

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

“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.”

“A mixture of brandy and water spoils two good things.”

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.”

“I could never hate anyone I knew.”

“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.”

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

“Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.”

“He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”

“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

“A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.”

“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

“My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.”

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

“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.”

“It is good to love the unknown.”

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

“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.”

“Nothing is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the faces of a newly married couple - in that of the lady particularly.”

“Since all the maids are good and loveable, from whence come the evil wives?”

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

“I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.”

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

“Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.”

“Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.”

“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.”

“A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in Nature.”

“Anything awful makes me laugh.  I misbehaved once at a funeral.”

“Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.”

“Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.”

“Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.”

“For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.”

“He did not stand shivering upon the brink, he was a thoroughly-paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity.”

“Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.”

“His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.”

“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”

“I have been to a funeral; I can’t describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals.”

“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.”

“I have not volition enough left to dot my i’s, much less to comb my eyebrows.”

“If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!”

“May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and exhaled in a pun.”

“My bedfellows are cough and cramp; we sleep three in a bed.”

“My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.”

“Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.”

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

“Presents endear absents.”

“Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.”

“Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude.  We thank them for nothing.”

“The beggar wears all colors fearing none.”

“The first water cure was the Flood, and it killed more than it cured.”

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

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

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

“The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through.  If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.”

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

“The vices of some men are magnificent.”

“To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.”

“Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse.”

“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.”

“When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed: Damn the age; I will write for antiquity.”

“You look wise; pray, correct that error.”

Charles Lamb has appeared in the following films:
Once a Crook (1941)
Appointment with Venus (1951)
The Galloping Major (1951)
Curtain Up (1952)
Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953)
The Intruder (1953)
Impulse (1954)
John and Julie (1955)
Raising a Riot (1955)
The Extra Day (1956)
Davy (1957)
Hell Drivers (1957)
Lucky Jim (1957)
Jack the Ripper (1959)
The Nun’s Story (1959)
The Shakedown (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
The Criminal (1960)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Hide and Seek (1964)
Life at the Top (1965)
Charlie Bubbles (1967)
Subterfuge (1968)
The Southern Star (1969)
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975)
The Tall Guy (1989)