Background Image

...

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!

-Charles Lamb

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Antiquity! Thou Wondrous Charm,

Charles Lamb

...

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!

Views: 8

Topic

More From Charles Lamb

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

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?

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

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

Brandy And Water Spoils Two Good Things.

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

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

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

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!

Asparagus Inspires Gentle Thoughts.

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!

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

Cards Are War, In Disguise Of A Sport.

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.

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

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

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!

Boys Are Capital Fellows In Their Own Way, Among Their Mates; But They Are Unwholesome Companions For Grown People.

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

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.

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

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

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.

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.

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."

Damn The Age. I'll Write For Antiquity.

Gone Before To That Unknown And Silent Shore.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

I Have Something More To Do Than To Feel.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

No Eye To Watch, And No Tongue To Wound Us, All Earth Forgot, And All Heaven Around Us.

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.

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

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!

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

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.

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.'

Presents, I Often Say, Endear Absents.

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.

The Truant Fancy Was A Wanderer Ever.

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.

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!

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

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

Funny Best Friend

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Have Friends At Court.

Books Which Are No Books.

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

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

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

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.

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

He Is No Lawyer Who Cannot Take Two Sides.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

If Dirt Were Trumps, What Hands You Would Hold!

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

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

Beholding Heaven, And Feeling Hell.

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.

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

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.

Shut Not Thy Purse-strings Always Against Painted Distress.

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

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.

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

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.

Let Us Live For The Beauty Of Our Own Reality.

The World Meets Nobody Half Way.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

Latitude And Longitude

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Trample Not On The Ruins Of A Man.

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

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 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.

Man, While He Loves, Is Never Quite Depraved.

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

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!

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

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

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

Clap An Extinguisher Upon Your Irony If You Are Unhappily Blessed With A Vein Of It.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Half As Sober As A Judge.

I Conceive Disgust At Those Impertinent And Misbecoming Familiarities, Inscribed Upon Your Ordinary Tombstones. Every Dead Man Must Take Upon Himself To Be Lecturing Me With His Odious Truism, That "such As He Now Is, I Must Shortly Be." Not So Shortly, Friend, Perhaps, As Thou Imaginest. In The Meantime I Am Alive. I Move About. I Am Worth Twenty Of Thee. Know Thy Betters!

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

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

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

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.

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 Am In Love With This Green Earth.

To Be Sick Is To Enjoy Monarchical Prerogatives.

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

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.

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.

I Am In Love With The Green Earth.

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.

By Myself Walking, To Myself Talking.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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 Beggar Wears All Colors Fearing None.

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

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

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

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

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!

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?"

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.

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.

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

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

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

The Muses Were Dumb While Apollo Lectured.

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

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

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

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.

From A Poor Man, Poor In Time, I Was Suddenly Lifted Up Into A Vast Revenue; I Could See No End Of My Possessions; I Wanted Some Steward, Or Judicious Bailiff, To Manage My Estates In Time For Me.

'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.

Riddle Of Destiny, Who Can Show What Thy Short Visit Meant, Or Know What Thy Errand Here Below?

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.

She Unbent Her Mind Afterwards - Over A Book.

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

Trending Author

Laura Hillenbrand

Barbara Mikulski

Alistair Darling

Category