Charles Lamb

I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

There is more reason to say grace before beginning a book than there is to say it before beginning to dine.

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.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.

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.

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space and yet nothing troubles me less.

For thy sake tobacco I Would do anything but die.

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 that it was an acquired one.

Neat not gaudy.

He might have proved a useful adjunct if not an ornament to society.