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.
— Charles Lamb
The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
New Year's Day is every man's birthday.
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.
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.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
The beggar wears all colors fearing none.
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
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.
Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
I could never hate anyone I knew.
For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.
Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
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.
The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.
Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
It is good to love the unknown.
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.
Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.
What is reading, but silent conversation.
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.
