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Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body
came to be called in question by it.
Topic: Absence
Source: Amicus Redivivus
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For with G.D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to
speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord.
Topic: Absence
Source: Oxford in the Vacation
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Neat, not gaudy.
Topic: Apparel
Source: in a letter to Wordsworth
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Suck, baby! suck! mother's love grows by giving:
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
Black manhood comes when riotous guilty living
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.
Topic: Babyhood
Source: The Gypsy's Malison, a sonnet in a letter to Mrs. Procter
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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.
Topic: Bells
Source: The Sabbath Bells
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A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.
Topic: Cards
Source: Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist
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The game [of poker] exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism
that have made our country so great.
Topic: Cards
Source: Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist
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Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Topic: Cards
Source: Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist
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You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you
are preparing for yourself!
[Fr., Vous ne jouez donc pas le whist, monsieur? Helas! quelle
triste vieilesse vous vous preparez!
Topic: Cards
Source: Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist
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If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
Topic: Cleanliness
Source: Lamb's Suppers (vol. II, last chapter)
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A woman asked a 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. Gillman's did the
business for me."
Topic: Eating
Source: Autobiographical Recollections, by Charles R. Leslie
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He hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious
epicure--and for such a tomb might be content to die.
Topic: Eating
Source: Dissertation upon Roast Pig
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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.
Topic: Faces
Source: The Old Familiar Faces
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The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.
Topic: Fancy
Source: Fancy employed on Divine Subjects (I, 1)
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"Presents," I often say, endear Absents."
Topic: Gifts
Source: A Dissertation upon Roast Pig
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Half as sober as a judge.
Topic: Judges
Source: Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Maxon
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I'm not final because I'm right, I'm right because I'm final.
Topic: Judges
Source: Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Maxon
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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 those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
- Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia),
Topic: Libraries
Source: Essays of Elia--Oxford in the Vacation
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Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.
Topic: Philanthropy
Source: Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis
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I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
When I am not walking, I am reading;
I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.
- Charles Lamb (used pseudonym Elia),
Topic: Reading
Source: Last Essays of Elia--Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading
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He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to
society.
Topic: Society
Source: Captain Starkey
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Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well
is the great art of social life.
Topic: Society
Source: Captain Starkey
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Neat, not gaudy.
Topic: Style
Source: in a letter to Wordsworth
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Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with
its usual severity.
Topic: Summer
Source: To V. Novello
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To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an
interminable tedious sweetness.
Topic: Sweetness
Source: On Ears
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Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down . . .
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . .
Sabbathless Satan!
Topic: Work
Source: Work
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