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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.

-Charles Lamb

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A Man Can Never

Charles Lamb

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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.

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In Every Thing That Relates To Science, I Am A Whole Encyclopaedia Behind The Rest Of The World.

And The Tear That We Shed, Though In Secret It Rolls, Shall Long Keep His Memory Green In Our Souls.

An Album Is A Garden, Not For Show Planted, But Use; Where Wholesome Herbs Should Grow.

A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature.

It Is With Some Violation Of The Imagination That We Conceive Of An Actor Belonging To The Relations Of Private Life, So Closely Do We Identify These Persons In Our Mind With The Characters Which They Assume Upon The Stage.

Nothing To Me Is More Distasteful Than That Entire Complacency And Satisfaction Which Beam In The Countenances Of A New Married Couple; In That Of The Lady Particularly; It Tells You That Her Lot Is Disposed Of In This World; That You Can Have No Hopes For Her.

A Poor Relation Is The Most Irrelevant Thing In Nature, A Piece Of Non Pertinent Correspondence, An Odious Approximation, A Haunting Conscience, A Preposterous Shadow, Lengthening In The Noontide Of Our Prosperity.

I Toiled After It, Sir, As Some Men Toil After Virtue.

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.

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference. It Is That From Which All Date Their Time, And Count Upon What Is Left. It Is The Nativity Of Our Common Adam.

We Grow Gray In Our Spirit Long Before We Grow Gray In Our Hair.

We Were Happier When We Were Poorer, But We Were Also Younger.

He Has Left Off Reading Altogether, To The Great Improvement Of His Originality.

Half As Sober As A Judge.

Cards Are War, In Disguise Of A Sport.

When I Am Not Walking, I Am Reading. I Cannot Sit And Think.

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.

Books Which Are No Books.

Much Depends Upon When And Where You Read A Book. In The Five Or Six Impatient Minutes Before The Dinner Is Quite Ready, Who Would Think Of Taking Up The Faerie Queen For A Stopgap, Or A Volume Of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

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 Have Passed All My Days In London, Until I Have Formed As Many And Intense Local Attachments As Any Of You Mountaineers Can Have Done With Dead Nature.

I Grow Ominously Tired Of Official Confinement. Thirty Years Have I Served The Philistines, And My Neck Is Not Subdued To The Yoke. You Don't Know How Wearisome It Is To Breathe The Air Of Four Pent Walls Without Relief Day After Day, All The Golden Hours Of The Day Between Ten And Four Without Ease Or Interposition ... These Pestilential Clerk-faces Always In One's Dish. O For A Few Years Between The Grave And The Desk!

Don't Introduce Me To That Man! I Want To Go On Hating Him, And I Can't Hate A Man Whom I Know.

For With G. D., To Be Absent From The Body Is Sometimes (not To Speak Profanely) To Be Present With The Lord.

Tis Unpleasant To Meet A Beggar. It Is Painful To Deny Him; And, If You Relieve Him, It Is So Much Out Of Your Pocket.

The Cheerful Sabbath Bells, Wherever Heard, Strike Pleasant On The Sense, Most Like The Voice Of One, Who From The Far-off Hills Proclaims Tidings Of Good To Zion.

Be Not Frightened At The Hard Words "imposition," "imposture;" Give And Ask No Questions. Cast Thy Bread Upon The Waters. Some Have, Unawares, Entertained Angels.

Tis The Privilege Of Friendship To Talk Nonsense, And To Have Nonsense Respected.

Funny Best Friend

Friend Of My Bosom, Thou More Than A Brother, Why Wert Thou Not Born In My Father's Dwelling?

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

Philanthropy, Like Charity, Must Begin At Home.

In The Negro Countenance You Will Often Meet With Strong Traits Of Benignity. I Have Felt Yearnings Of Tenderness Towards Some Of These Faces.

Trample Not On The Ruins Of A Man.

Go Where Glory Waits Thee! But While Fame Elates Thee, Oh, Still Remember Me!

I Have Done All That I Came Into This World To Do. I Have Worked Task Work, And Have The Rest Of The Day To Myself.

His Voice Was The Most Obnoxious Squeak I Ever Was Tormented With.

The Red-letter Days, Now Become, To All Intents And Purposes, Dead-letter Days.

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!

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?

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.

A Flow'ret Crushed In The Bud, A Nameless Piece Of Babyhood, Was In Her Cradle-coffin Lying; Extinct, With Scarce The Sense Of Dying

Those Evening Bells! Those Evening Bells! How Many A Tale Their Music Tells Of Youth And Home, And That Sweet Time When Last I Heard Their Soothing Chime!

For Thy Sake, Tobacco, I Would Do Anything But Die.

I Allow No Hot-beds In The Gardens Of Parnassus.

Ay, Down To The Dust With Them, Slaves As They Are! From This Hour Let The Blood In Their Dastardly Veins, That Shrunk At The First Touch Of Liberty's War, Be Wasted For Tyrants, Or Stagnate In Chains.

Fly Not Yet; 't Is Just The Hour When Pleasure, Like The Midnight Flower That Scorns The Eye Of Vulgar Light, Begins To Bloom For Sons Of Night And Maids Who Love The Moon.

Books Think For Me. I Can Read Anything Which I Call A Book.

A Man Cannot Have A Pure Mind Who Refuses Apple Dumplings.

Literature Is A Bad Crutch, But A Good Walking-stick.

Summer, As My Friend Coleridge Waggishly Writes, Has Set In With Its Usual Severity.

Oh, Ever Thus, From Childhood's Hour, I 've Seen My Fondest Hopes Decay; I Never Loved A Tree Or Flower But 't Was The First To Fade Away. I Never Nurs'd A Dear Gazelle, To Glad Me With Its Soft Black Eye, But When It Came To Know Me Well And Love Me, It Was Sure To Die.

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

't Is Sweet To Think That Where'er We Rove We Are Sure To Find Something Blissful And Dear; And That When We 're Far From The Lips We Love, We 've But To Make Love To The Lips We Are Near.

The Going Away Of Friends Does Not Make The Remainder More Precious. It Takes So Much From Them As There Was A Common Link. A. B. And C. Make A Party. A. Dies. B. Not Only Loses A. But All A.'s Part In C. C. Loses A.'s Part In B., And So The Alphabet Sickens By Subtraction Of Interchangeables.

Every Commonplace Or Trite Observation Is Not A Truism.

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.

He Might Have Proved A Useful Adjunct, If Not An Ornament To Society.

Anything Awful Makes Me Laugh. I Misbehaved Once At A Funeral.

The Laws Of Pluto's Kingdom Know Small Difference Between King And Cobbler, Manager And Call-boy; And, If Haply Your Dates Of Life Were Conterminant, You Are Quietly Taking Your Passage, Cheek By Cheek (o Ignoble Levelling Of Death) With The Shade Of Some Recently Departed Candle-snuffer.

Shut Not Thy Purse-strings Always Against Painted Distress.

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

If Dirt Were Trumps, What Hands You Would Hold!

Shall I Ask The Brave Soldier Who Fights By My Side In The Cause Of Mankind, If Our Creeds Agree?

You Do Not Play Then At Whist, Sir? Alas, What A Sad Old Age You Are Preparing For Yourself!

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.

Returning To Town In The Stage-coach, Which Was Filled With Mr. Gilman's Guests, We Stopped For A Minute Or Two At Kentish Town. A Woman Asked The Coachman, "are You Full Inside?" Upon Which Lamb Put His Head Through The Window And Said, "i Am Quite Full Inside; That Last Piece Of Pudding At Mr. Gilman's Did The Business For Me."

Wert Thou All That I Wish Thee, Great, Glorious, And Free, First Flower Of The Earth And First Gem Of The Sea.

The Trumpet Does Not More Stun You By Its Loudness, Than A Whisper Teases You By Its Provoking Inaudibility.

Thus, When The Lamp That Lighted The Traveller At First Goes Out, He Feels Awhile Benighted, And Looks Around In Fear And Doubt. But Soon, The Prospect Clearing, By Cloudless Starlight On He Treads, And Thinks No Lamp So Cheering As That Light Which Heaven Sheds.

Is The World All Grown Up? Is Childhood Dead? Or Is There Not In The Bosom Of The Wisest And The Best Some Of The Child's Heart Left, To Respond To Its Earliest Enchantments?

No Work Is Worse Than Overwork; The Mind Preys On Itself,--the Most Unwholesome Of Food.

Let Us Live For The Beauty Of Our Own Reality.

Who Has Not Felt How Sadly Sweet The Dream Of Home, The Dream Of Home, Steals O'er The Heart, Too Soon To Fleet, When Far O'er Sea Or Land We Roam?

As Half In Shade And Half In Sun This World Along Its Path Advances, May That Side The Sun 's Upon Be All That E'er Shall Meet Thy Glances!

Mother's Love Grows By Giving.

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

Cultivate Simplicity Or Rather Should I Say Banish Elaborateness, For Simplicity Springs Spontaneous From The Heart.

As Down In The Sunless Retreats Of The Ocean Sweet Flowers Are Springing No Mortal Can See, So Deep In My Soul The Still Prayer Of Devotion, Unheard By The World, Rises Silent To Thee. As Still To The Star Of Its Worship, Though Clouded, The Needle Points Faithfully O'er The Dim Sea, So Dark When I Roam In This Wintry World Shrouded, The Hope Of My Spirit Turns Trembling To Thee.

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.

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.

When Thus The Heart Is In A Vein Of Tender Thought, The Simplest Strain Can Touch It With Peculiar Power.

I Ask And Wish Not To Appear More Beauteous, Rich Or Gay: Lord, Make Me Wiser Every Year, And Better Every Day.

A Presentation Copy, Reader,-if Haply You Are Yet Innocent Of Such Favours-is A Copy Of A Book Which Does Not Sell, Sent You By The Author.

How Sickness Enlarges The Dimensions Of A Man's Self To Himself! Supreme Selfishness Is Inculcated Upon Him As His Only Duty.

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

My Theory Is To Enjoy Life, But My Practice Is Against It.

To Be Sick Is To Enjoy Monarchical Prerogatives.

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

I Am Determined That My Children Shall Be Brought Up In Their Father's Religion, If They Can Find Out What It Is.

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.

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.

I Counsel Thee, Shut Not Thy Heart, Nor Thy Library.

Judge Not Man By His Outward Manifestation Of Faith; For Some There Are Who Tremblingly Reach Out Shaking Hands To The Guidance Of Faith; Others Who Stoutly Venture In The Dark Their Human Confidence, Their Leader, Which They Mistake For Faith; Some Whose Hope Totters Upon Crutches; Others Who Stalk Into Futurity Upon Stilts. The Difference Is Chiefly Constitutional With Them.

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.

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!

He Is No Lawyer Who Cannot Take Two Sides.

How Sickness Enlarges The Dimension Of A Man’s Self To Himself!

The Man Must Have A Rare Recipe For Melancholy, Who Can Be Dull In Fleet Street.

A Child's Nature Is Too Serious A Thing To Admit Of Its Being Regarded As A Mere Appendage To Another Being.

I Have Sat Through An Italian Opera, Til, For Sheer Pain, And Inexplicable Anguish, I Have Rushed Out Into The Noisiest Places Of The Crowded Street, To Solace Myself With Sounds Which I Was Not Obliged To Follow And Get Rid Of The Distracting Torment Of Endless, Fruitless, Barren Attention!

I Hate A Man Who Swallows [his Food], Affecting Not To Know What He Is Eating. I Suspect His Taste In Higher Matters.

Opinions Is A Species Of Property - I Am Always Desirous Of Sharing.

To Be Thankful For What We Grasp Exceeding Our Proportion Is To Add Hypocrisy To Injustice.

Milton Almost Requires A Solemn Service Of Music To Be Played Before You Enter Upon Him. But He Brings His Music, To Which Who Listen Had Need Bring Docile Thoughts And Purged Ears.

Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate.

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.

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

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?

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference.

We Do Not Go To The Theatre Like Our Ancestors, To Escape From The Pressure Of Reality, So Much As To Confirm Our Experience Of It.

Oh For A Tongue To Curse The Slave Whose Treason, Like A Deadly Blight, Comes O'er The Councils Of The Brave, And Blasts Them In Their Hour Of Might!

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.

We Love To Chew The Cud Of A Foregone Vision; To Collect The Scattered Rays Of A Brighter Phantasm, Or Act Over Again, With Firmer Nerves, The Sadder Nocturnal Tragedies.

Take All The Pleasures Of All The Spheres, And Multiply Each Through Endless Years,- One Minute Of Heaven Is Worth Them All.

In Some Respects The Better A Book Is, The Less It Demands From The Binding.

When Twilight Dews Are Falling Soft Upon The Rosy Sea, Love, I Watch The Star Whose Beam So Oft Has Lighted Me To Thee, Love.

Man Is A Gaming Animal. He Must Always Be Trying To Get The Better In Something Or Other.

Is It A Stale Remark To Say That I Have Constantly Found The Interest Excited At A Playhouse To Bear An Exact Inverse Proportion To The Price Paid For Admission?

Books Of Quick Interest, That Hurry On For Incidents Are For The Eye To Glide Over Only. It Will Not Do To Read Them Out. I Could Never Listen To Even The Better Kind Of Modern Novels Without Extreme Irksomeness.

Lawyers, I Suppose, Were Children Once.

Can We Ring The Bells Backward? Can We Unlearn The Arts That Pretend To Civilize, And Then Burn The World? There Is A March Of Science; But Who Shall Beat The Drums For Its Retreat?

Not Many Sounds In Life, And I Include All Urban And All Rural Sounds, Exceed In Interest A Knock At The Door.

The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls The Soul Of Music Shed, Now Hangs As Mute On Tara's Walls As If That Soul Were Fled. So Sleeps The Pride Of Former Days, So Glory's Thrill Is O'er; And Hearts That Once Beat High For Praise Now Feel That Pulse No More.

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.

I Am In Love With The Green Earth.

By Myself Walking, To Myself Talking.

Reader, If You Are Gifted With Nerves Like Mine, Aspire To Any Character But That Of A Wit.

Credulity Is The Man's Weakness, But The Child's Strength.

This Very Night I Am Going To Leave Off Tobacco! Surely There Must Be Some Other World In Which This Unconquerable Purpose Shall Be Realised.

O Money, Money, How Blindly Thou Hast Been Worshipped, And How Stupidly Abused! Thou Are Health And Liberty And Strength, And He That Has Thee May Rattle His Pockets At The Foul Fiend!

Farewell, Farewell To Thee, Araby's Daughter! Thus Warbled A Peri Beneath The Dark Sea.

Nothing Puzzles Me More Than Time And Space; And Yet Nothing Troubles Me Less, As I Never Think About Them.

I Cannot Sit And Think; Books Think For Me.

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

And When Once The Young Heart Of A Maiden Is Stolen, The Maiden Herself Will Steal After It Soon.

I Hate The Man Who Eats Without Knowing What He’s Eating. I Doubt His Taste In More Important Things.

The Drinking Man Is Never Less Himself Than During His Sober Intervals.

This Is The Magnanimity Of Authorship, When A Writer Having A Topic Presented To Him, Fruitful Of Beauties For Common Minds, Waives His Privilege, And Trusts To The Judicious Few For Understanding The Reason Of His Abstinence.

May Be The Truth Is, That One Pipe Is Wholesome, Two Pipes Toothsome, Three Pipes Noisome, Four Pipes Fulsome, Five Pipes Quarrelsome; And That's The Some On't.

A Clear Fire, A Clean Hearth, And The Rigour Of The Game.

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.

Not If I Know Myself At All.

While Childhood, And While Dreams, Producing Childhood, Shall Be Left, Imagination Shall Not Have Spread Her Holy Wings Totally To Fly The Earth.

The Good Things Of Life Are Not To Be Had Singly, But Come To Us With A Mixture; Like A School-boy's Holiday, With A Task Affixed To The Tail Of It.

Man Is A Gaming Animal.

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

He Who Hath Not A Dram Of Folly In His Mixture Hath Pounds Of Much Worse Matter In His Composition.

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

The Most Mortifying Infirmity In Human Nature, To Feel In Ourselves, Or To Contemplate In Another, Is Perhaps Cowardice.

The Greatest Pleasure I Know, Is To Do A Good Action By Stealth, And To Have It Found Out By Accident.

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 Have Been Trying All My Life To Like Scotchmen, And Am Obliged To Desist From The Experiment In Despair.

My Only Books Were Woman's Looks,- And Folly 's All They 've Taught Me.

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

Here Cometh April Again, And As Far As I Can See The World Hath More Fools In It Than Ever.

Funny Inspirational

Since All The Maids Are Good And Lovable, From Whence Come The Bad Wives?

The Teller Of A Mirthful Tale Has Latitude Allowed Him. We Are Content With Less Than Absolute Truth.

Latitude And Longitude

To Sigh, Yet Feel No Pain; To Weep, Yet Scarce Know Why; To Sport An Hour With Beauty's Chain, Then Throw It Idly By.

I Give Thee All,-i Can No More, Though Poor The Off'ring Be; My Heart And Lute Are All The Store That I Can Bring To Thee.

The Pilasters Reaching Down Were Adorned With A Glistering Substance (i Know Not What) Under Glass (as It Seemed), Resembling - A Homely Fancy, But I Judged It To Be Sugar-candy; Yet To My Raised Imagination, Divested Of Its Homelier Qualities, It Appeared A Glorified Candy.

Our Appetites, Of One Or Another Kind, Are Excellent Spurs To Our Reason, Which Might Otherwise But Feebly Set About The Great Ends Of Preserving And Continuing The Species.

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.

Asparagus Inspires Gentle Thoughts.

Rags, Which Are The Reproach Of Poverty, Are The Beggar's Robes, And Graceful Insignia Of His Profession, His Tenure, His Full Dress, The Suit In Which He Is Expected To Show Himself In Public.

The Truant Fancy Was A Wanderer Ever.

My Motto Is: Contented With Little, Yet Wishing For More.

Presents, I Often Say, Endear Absents.

Of All Sound Of All Bells... Most Solemn And Touching Is The Peal Which Rings Out The Old Year.

Antiquity! Thou Wondrous Charm, What Art Thou? That Being Nothing Art Everything? When Thou Wert, Thou Wert Not Antiquity - Then Thou Wert Nothing, But Hadst A Remoter Antiquity, As Thou Calledst It, To Look Back To With Blind Veneration; Thou Thyself Being To Thyself Flat, Jejune, Modern! What Mystery Lurks In This Retroversion? Or What Half Januses Are We, That Cannot Look Forward With The Same Idolatry With Which We For Ever Revert! The Mighty Future Is As Nothing, Being Everything! The Past Is Everything, Being Nothing!

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

There Are Like To Be Short Graces Where The Devil Plays Host.

A Miser Is Sometimes A Grand Personification Of Fear. He Has A Fine Horror Of Poverty; And He Is Not Content To Keep Want From The Door, Or At Arm's Length, But He Places It, By Heaping Wealth Upon Wealth, At A Sublime Distance!

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

A Poor Relation—is The Most Irrelevant Thing In Nature.

I Conceive Disgust At These Impertinent And Misbecoming Familiarities Inscribed Upon Your Ordinary Tombstone.

New Year's Day Is Every Man's Birthday.

A Presentation Copy...is A Copy Of A Book Whoch Does Not Sell, Sent You By The Author, With His Foolish Autograph At The Beginning Of It; For Which, If A Stranger, He Only Demands Your Friendship; If A Brother Author, He Expects From You A Book Of Yours, Which Does Not Sell, In Return.

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

I Am Retired Leisure. I Am To Be Met With In Trim Gardens. I Am Already Come To Be Known By My Vacant Face And Careless Gesture, Perambulating At No Fixed Pace Nor With Any Settled Purpose. I Walk About; Not To And From.

Positively, The Best Thing A Man Can Have To Do, Is Nothing, And Next To That Perhaps — Good Works.

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.

You Look Wise, Pray Correct That Error.

If Thou Would'st Have Me Sing And Play As Once I Play'd And Sung, First Take This Time-worn Lute Away, And Bring One Freshly Strung.

How Often You Are Irresistibly Drawn To A Plain, Unassuming Woman, Whose Soft Silvery Tones Render Her Positively Attractive! In The Social Circle, How Pleasant It Is To Hear A Woman Talk In That Low Key Which Always Characterizes The True Lady. In The Sanctuary Of Home, How Such A Voice Soothes The Fretful Child And Cheers The Weary Husband!

There Is Absolutely No Such Thing As Reading But By A Candle. We Have Tried The Affectation Of A Book At Noon-day In Gardens, And In Sultry Arbours, But It Was Labor Thrown Away. Those Gay Motes In The Beam Come About You, Hovering And Teasing, Like So Many Coquets, That Will Have You All To Their Self, And Are Jealous Of Your Abstractions. By The Midnight Taper, The Writers Digests His Meditations. By The Same Light We Must Approach To Their Perusal, If We Would Catch The Flame, The Odour.

Oh Stay! Oh Stay! Joy So Seldom Weaves A Chain Like This To-night, That Oh 't Is Pain To Break Its Links So Soon.

To Pile Up Honey Upon Sugar, And Sugar Upon Honey, To An Interminable Tedious Sweetness.

I Never Knew An Enemy To Puns Who Was Not An Ill-natured Man.

How Some They Have Died, And Some They Have Left Me, And Some Are Taken From Me; All Are Departed; All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

Dream Not ... Of Having Tasted All The Grandeur And Wildness Of Fancy Till You Have Gone Mad!

(the Pig) Hath A Fair Sepulchre In The Grateful Stomach Of The Judicious Epicure - And For Such A Tomb Might Be Content To Die.

For God's Sake (i Never Was More Serious) Don't Make Me Ridiculous Any More By Terming Me Gentle-hearted In Print.

Not Childhood Alone, But The Young Man Till Thirty, Never Feels Practically That He Is Mortal.

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

I Love To Lose Myself In Other Men's Minds.... Books Think For Me.

The Muses Were Dumb While Apollo Lectured.

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

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?"

We Are Nothing; Less Than Nothing, And Dreams. We Are Only What Might Have Been, And Must Wait Upon The Tedious Shores Of Lethe Millions Of Ages Before We Have Existence, And A Name.

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