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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!

-Charles Lamb

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A Miser Is Sometimes

Charles Lamb

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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!

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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.

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

Latitude And Longitude

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.

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.

Oft In The Stilly Night, Ere Slumber's Chain Has Bound Me, Fond Memory Brings The Light Of Other Days Around Me; The Smiles, The Tears, Of Boyhood's Years, The Words Of Love Then Spoken; The Eyes That Shone Now Dimmed And Gone, The Cheerful Hearts Now Broken.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Measure Of Choosing Well, Is, Whether A Man Likes And Finds Good In What He Has Chosen.

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.

If There Be A Regal Solitude, It Is A Sick-bed. How The Patient Lords It There!

I Cannot Sit And Think; Books Think For Me.

The Beggar Wears All Colors Fearing None.

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

Not If I Know Myself At All.

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

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

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

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.

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

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

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?"

Every Commonplace Or Trite Observation Is Not A Truism.

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

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.

When True Hearts Lie Wither'd And Fond Ones Are Flown, Oh, Who Would Inhabit This Bleak World Alone?

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

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

All People Have Their Blind Side-their Superstitions.

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

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

Funny Inspirational

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature.

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!

Mother's Love Grows By Giving.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Our Spirits Grow Gray Before Our Hairs.

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.

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

I Mean Your Borrowers Of Books - Those Mutilators Of Collections, Spoilers Of The Symmetry Of Shelves, And Creators Of Odd Volumes.

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!

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.

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

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?

A Persian's Heaven Is Eas'ly Made: 't Is But Black Eyes And Lemonade.

Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate.

Trample Not On The Ruins Of A Man.

You Look Wise, Pray Correct That Error.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Damn The Age. I'll Write For Antiquity.

What A Place To Be In Is An Old Library! It Seems As Though All The Souls Of All The Writers That Have Bequeathed Their Labours To These Bodleians Were Reposing Here As In Some Dormitory, Or Middle State. I Do Not Want To Handle, To Profane The Leaves, Their Winding-sheets. I Could As Soon Dislodge A Shade. I Seem To Inhale Learning, Walking Amid Their Foliage; And The Odor Of Their Old Moth-scented Coverings Is Fragrant As The First Bloom Of The Sciential Apples Which Grew Amid The Happy Orchard.

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!

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!

I Have Something More To Do Than To Feel.

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

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

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

The Light That Lies In Woman's Eyes.

Separate From The Pleasure Of Your Company, I Don't Much Care If I Never See Another Mountain In My Life.

I Know That A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature, Not Even Excepting The Delicate Creatures Which Bear Them.

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.

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

Half As Sober As A Judge.

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

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.

Ceremony Is An Invention To Take Off The Uneasy Feeling Which We Derive From Knowing Ourselves To Be Less The Object Of Love And Esteem With A Fellow-creature Than Some Other Person Is. It Endeavours To Make Up, By Superior Attentions In Little Points, For That Invidious Preference Which It Is Forced To Deny In The Greater.

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.

I'd Like To Grow Very Old As Slowly As Possible.

She Unbent Her Mind Afterwards - Over A Book.

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.

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

Funny Best Friend

Time Partially Reconciles Us To Anything. I Gradually Became Content--doggedly Contented, As Wild Animals In Cages.

Sassafras Wood Boiled Down To A Kind Of Tea, And Tempered With An Infusion Of Milk And Sugar Hath To Some A Delicacy Beyond The China Luxury.

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

Coleridge Declares That A Man Cannot Have A Good Conscience Who Refuses Apple Dumplings, And I Confess That I Am Of The Same Opinion.

What Have I Gained By Health? Intolerable Dullness. What By Mode Meals? A Total Blank.

I Am, In Plainer Words, A Bundle Of Prejudices - Made Up Of Likings And Dislikings.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Presents, I Often Say, Endear Absents.

'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.

Merit, God Knows, Is Very Little Rewarded.

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

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?

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

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.

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

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.

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.

We Are Nothing; Less Than Nothing, And Dreams. We Are Only What Might Have Been.

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

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?

In The Indications Of Female Poverty There Can Be No Disguise. No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Caprice.

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

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.

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

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

Books Which Are No Books.

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

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference.

We All Have Some Taste Or Other, Of Too Ancient A Date To Admit Of Our Remembering It Was An Acquired One.

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.

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.

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.

How I Like To Be Liked, And What I Do To Be Liked!

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

There Was A Little Man, And He Had A Little Soul; And He Said, Little Soul, Let Us Try, Try, Try!

Men Marry For Fortune, And Sometimes To Please Their Fancy; But, Much Oftener Than Is Suspected, They Consider What The World Will Say Of It--how Such A Woman In Their Friends' Eyes Will Look At The Head Of A Table. Hence We See So Many Insipid Beauties Made Wives Of, That Could Not Have Struck The Particular Fancy Of Any Man That Had Any Fancy At All.

We Are Ashamed At The Sight Of A Monkey--somehow As We Are Shy Of Poor Relations.

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.

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 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!

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

A Garden Was The Primitive Prison, Till Man With Promethean Felicity And Boldness, Luckily Sinned Himself Out Of It.

Asparagus Inspires Gentle Thoughts.

Surely It Is A Matter Of Joy, That Your Faith In Jesus Has Been Preserved; The Comforter That Should Relieve You Is Not Far From You. But As You Are A Christian, In The Name Of That Saviour, Who Was Filled With Bitterness And Made Druken With Wormwood, I Conjre You To Have Recourse In Frequent Prayer To 'his God And Your God,' The God Of Mercies, And Father Of All Comfort. Your Poor Father Is, I Hope, Almost Senseless Of The Calamity; The Unconscious Instrument Of Divine Providence Knows It Not, And Your Mother Is In Heaven.

May My Last Breath Be Drawn Through A Pipe, And Exhaled In A Jest.

I Even Think That, Sentimentally, I Am Disposed To Harmony. But Organically I Am Incapable Of A Tune.

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

Gone Before To That Unknown And Silent Shore.

I Know That A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature?but The Prettier The Kind Of A Thing Is, The More Desirable It Is That It Should Be Pretty Of Its Kind.

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.

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

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.

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

I Can Scarce Bring Myself To Believe, That I Am Admitted To A Familiar Correspondence, And All The License Of Friendship, With A Man Who Writes Blank Verse Like Milton.

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!

A Babe Is Fed With Milk And Praise.

I Own That I Am Disposed To Say Grace Upon Twenty Other Occasions In The Course Of The Day Besides My Dinner. I Want A Form For Setting Out Upon A Pleasant Walk, For A Moonlight Ramble, For A Friendly Meeting, Or A Solved Problem. Why Have We None For Books, These Spiritual Repasts-a Grace Before Milton-a Grace Before Shakespeare-a Devotional Exercise Proper To Be Said Before Reading The Fairie Queene?

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

You May Derive Thoughts From Others; Your Way Of Thinking, The Mould In Which Your Thoughts Are Cast, Must Be Your Own.

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

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

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.

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

Let Us Live For The Beauty Of Our Own Reality.

It Is Well If The Good Man Himself Does Not Feel His Devotions A Little Clouded, Those Foggy Sensuous Steams Mingling With And Polluting The Pure Altar Surface.

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.

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

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

Your Absence Of Mind We Have Borne, Till Your Presence Of Body Came To Be Called In Question By It.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

Oh, Breathe Not His Name! Let It Sleep In The Shade, Where Cold And Unhonour'd His Relics Are Laid

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

Pain Is Life - The Sharper, The More Evidence Of Life.

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

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.

The World Meets Nobody Half Way.

Man Is A Gaming Animal.

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

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

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

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

Whose Wit In The Combat, As Gentle As Bright, Ne'er Carried A Heart-stain Away On Its Blade.

The Truant Fancy Was A Wanderer Ever.

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

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.

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.

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!

Alas! How Light A Cause May Move Dissension Between Hearts That Love! Hearts That The World In Vain Had Tried, And Sorrow But More Closely Tied; That Stood The Storm When Waves Were Rough, Yet In A Sunny Hour Fall Off, Like Ships That Have Gone Down At Sea When Heaven Was All Tranquillity.

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

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

Dr Parr...asked Him, How He Had Acquired His Power Of Smoking At Such A Rate? Lamb Replied, 'i Toiled After It, Sir, As Some Men Toil After Virtue.'

I Always Arrive Late At The Office, But I Make Up For It By Leaving Early.

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.

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?

Lawyers, I Suppose, Were Children Once.

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

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