372 Quotes by Charles Lamb

We were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger.

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.

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.

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 greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

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.

In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.