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

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. The Essays of Elia, "The Old and the New Schoolmaster," (1820-1823).)

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. The Last Essays of Elia, "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," (1833).)

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.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British poet. The Old Familiar Faces (l. 1-3). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. "Stage Illusion," The Last Essays of Elia (1833).)

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. "Oxford in the Vacation," Essays of Elia (1820-1823).)

Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave,
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie?
A more harmless vanity?

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British poet. On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (l. 60-64). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

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:

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British poet. On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (l. 3-6). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

But cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," Essays of Elia (1820-1823).)

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. letter, Jan. 2, 1810, to Thomas Manning. Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol. 3, ed. E.W. Marrs (1978).)

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.

(Charles Lamb (1775-1834), British essayist, critic. Last Essays of Elia, "Popular Fallacies: That the Worst Puns are the Best," (1833).)