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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?

-Charles Lamb

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I Own That I

Charles Lamb

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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?

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A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Latitude And Longitude

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

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?

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.

If Dirt Were Trumps, What Hands You Would Hold!

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Books Which Are No Books.

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

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.

This World Is All A Fleeting Show, For Man's Illusion Given The Smiles Of Joy, The Tears Of Woe, Deceitful Shine, Deceitful Flow, Theres Nothing True But Heaven.

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

Shut Not Thy Purse-strings Always Against Painted Distress.

I Have Something More To Do Than To Feel.

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.

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

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

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

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

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

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

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

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

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

Lawyers, I Suppose, Were Children Once.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

I Am In Love With The Green Earth.

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

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.

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!

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

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.

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.

Were I Diogenes, I Would Not Move Out Of A Kilderkin Into A Hogshead, Though The First Had Had Nothing But Small Beer In It, And The Second Reeked Claret.

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

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

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

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

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

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.

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

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.

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!

By Myself Walking, To Myself Talking.

The Light That Lies In Woman's Eyes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

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.

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

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.

Every Commonplace Or Trite Observation Is Not A Truism.

Merit, God Knows, Is Very Little Rewarded.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Not If I Know Myself At All.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Vices Of Some Men Are Magnificent.

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.

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.

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!

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

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 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 Truant Fancy Was A Wanderer Ever.

All People Have Their Blind Side-their Superstitions.

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

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

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

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

Damn The Age. I'll Write For Antiquity.

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

Presents, I Often Say, Endear Absents.

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

Funny Inspirational

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.

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

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."

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

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.

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

You Look Wise, Pray Correct That Error.

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

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

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?

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.

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Beggar Wears All Colors Fearing None.

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.

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

Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate.

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.

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

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.

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.

Half As Sober As A Judge.

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

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.

'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.

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

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

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference.

Gone Before To That Unknown And Silent Shore.

I Cannot Sit And Think; 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 Counsel Thee, Shut Not Thy Heart, Nor Thy Library.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

Man Is A Gaming Animal.

Trample Not On The Ruins Of A Man.

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.

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

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beholding Heaven, And Feeling Hell.

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.

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

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

Man, While He Loves, Is Never Quite Depraved.

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.

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

The Muses Were Dumb While Apollo Lectured.

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

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