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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.

-Charles Lamb

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I Am Retired Leisure.

Charles Lamb

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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.

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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!

Not If I Know Myself At All.

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.

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

Lawyers, I Suppose, Were Children Once.

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?

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

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.

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.

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

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.

'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.

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?

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

Gone Before To That Unknown And Silent Shore.

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.

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

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

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.

Brandy And Water Spoils Two Good Things.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

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.

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.

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.

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

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

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

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!

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

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

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Every Commonplace Or Trite Observation Is Not A Truism.

Half As Sober As A Judge.

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.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

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

Latitude And Longitude

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

I Cannot Sit And Think; Books Think For Me.

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

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

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

She Unbent Her Mind Afterwards - Over A Book.

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

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

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

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.

Beholding Heaven, And Feeling Hell.

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.

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.

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

By Myself Walking, To Myself Talking.

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

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.

Books Which Are No Books.

We Encourage One Another In Mediocrity.

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

The World Meets Nobody Half Way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shut Not Thy Purse-strings Always Against Painted Distress.

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.

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

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!

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?

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

A Babe Is Fed With Milk And Praise.

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.

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

Mother's Love Grows By Giving.

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

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.

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

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

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

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.

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 Am In Love With The Green Earth.

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

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.

All People Have Their Blind Side-their Superstitions.

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.

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

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

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

If Dirt Were Trumps, What Hands You Would Hold!

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.

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!

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

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!

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."

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.

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Muses Were Dumb While Apollo Lectured.

Man, While He Loves, Is Never Quite Depraved.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Cards Are War, In Disguise Of A Sport.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

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.

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.

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

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 Something More To Do Than To Feel.

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.

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

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

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

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

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?"

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

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!

Our Spirits Grow Gray Before Our Hairs.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature.

The Beggar Wears All Colors Fearing None.

Man Is A Gaming Animal.

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