Background Image

...

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.

-Charles Lamb

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Dehortations From The Use

Charles Lamb

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Charles Lamb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

Trample Not On The Ruins Of A Man.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

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

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.

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

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.

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

We Encourage One Another In Mediocrity.

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

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.

Damn The Age. I'll Write For Antiquity.

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

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

Funny Best Friend

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?

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.

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.

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

Man, While He Loves, Is Never Quite Depraved.

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

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

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.

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

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!

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

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?

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.

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

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!

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

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 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!

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.

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.

There Is Not In The Wide World A Valley So Sweet As That Vale In Whose Bosom The Bright Waters Meet.

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.

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

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

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

Our Spirits Grow Gray Before Our Hairs.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Philanthropy, Like Charity, Must Begin At Home.

Asparagus Inspires Gentle Thoughts.

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.

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

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

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

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

Oh Call It By Some Better Name, For Friendship Sounds Too Cold.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Funny Inspirational

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 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.

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

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

Not If I Know Myself At All.

The World Meets Nobody Half Way.

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.

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!

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference.

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

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

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.

I Cannot Sit And Think; Books Think For Me.

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

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.

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

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

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

Brandy And Water Spoils Two Good Things.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Presents, I Often Say, Endear Absents.

Cards Are War, In Disguise Of A Sport.

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.

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.

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

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!

If Dirt Were Trumps, What Hands You Would Hold!

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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

The Beggar Wears All Colors Fearing None.

All People Have Their Blind Side-their Superstitions.

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

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!

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

Lawyers, I Suppose, Were Children Once.

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

She Unbent Her Mind Afterwards - Over A Book.

Beholding Heaven, And Feeling Hell.

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.'

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?"

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.

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

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

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.

I Am In Love With The Green Earth.

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?

The Truant Fancy Was A Wanderer Ever.

You Look Wise, Pray Correct That Error.

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

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

Merit, God Knows, Is Very Little Rewarded.

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

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

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.

Every Commonplace Or Trite Observation Is Not A Truism.

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.

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

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

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.

Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate.

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.

Gone Before To That Unknown And Silent Shore.

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.

Newspapers Always Excite Curiosity. No One Ever Puts One Down Without The Feeling Of Disappointment.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Let Us Live For The Beauty Of Our Own Reality.

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

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

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

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

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

Latitude And Longitude

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?

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

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!

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

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

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

Books Which Are No Books.

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?

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.

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

Trending Author

Charles Henry Parkhurst

Category