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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?

-Charles Lamb

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Is It A Stale

Charles Lamb

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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?

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

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

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

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

Shut Not Thy Purse-strings Always Against Painted Distress.

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.

Our Spirits Grow Gray Before Our Hairs.

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

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

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

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

Man, While He Loves, Is Never Quite Depraved.

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

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.

All People Have Their Blind Side-their Superstitions.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

Latitude And Longitude

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

There Is A Pleasure In Affecting Affectation.

A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing In Nature.

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

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

Cultivate Simplicity, Coleridge.

It Is Good To Have Friends At Court.

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

It Is Good To Love The Unknown.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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 World Meets Nobody Half Way.

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

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

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

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

I Cannot Sit And Think; Books Think For Me.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A Laugh Is Worth A Hundred Groans In Any Market.

Asparagus Inspires Gentle Thoughts.

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

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.

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

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

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

Much Depends Upon When And Where You Read A Book. In The Five Or Six Impatient Minutes Before The Dinner Is Quite Ready, Who Would Think Of Taking Up The Faerie Queen For A Stopgap, Or A Volume Of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

I 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference.

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.

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

I Could Never Hate Anyone I Knew.

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.

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

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

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

Gluttony And Surfeiting Are No Proper Occasions For Thanksgiving.

Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

She Unbent Her Mind Afterwards - Over A Book.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Light That Lies In Woman's Eyes.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

We Encourage One Another In Mediocrity.

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

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

The Muses Were Dumb While Apollo Lectured.

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?

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

I Am In Love With This Green Earth.

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.

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.

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

Oh, The Pleasure Of Eating My Dinner Alone!

You Look Wise, Pray Correct That Error.

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 Is No Lawyer Who Cannot Take Two Sides.

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 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?"

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.

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

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.

Mother's Love Grows By Giving.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

English Physicians Kill You, The French Let You Die.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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."

Half As Sober As A Judge.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

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

All, All Are Gone, The Old Familiar Faces.

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 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.

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?

To Be Sick Is To Enjoy Monarchical Prerogatives.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Laxity Pervades The Popular Use Of Words.

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 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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

Beholding Heaven, And Feeling Hell.

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

Riches Are Chiefly Good Because They Give Us Time.

No One Ever Regarded The First Of January With Indifference. It Is That From Which All Date Their Time, And Count Upon What Is Left. It Is The Nativity Of Our Common Adam.

Oh Stay! Oh Stay! Joy So Seldom Weaves A Chain Like This To-night, That Oh 't Is Pain To Break Its Links So Soon.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Brandy And Water Spoils Two Good Things.

Satire Does Not Look Pretty Upon A Tombstone.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

Let Us Live For The Beauty Of Our Own Reality.

No Woman Dresses Below Herself From Mere Caprice.

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.

I Have Something More To Do Than To Feel.

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

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.

The True Poet Dreams Being Awake.

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