Чарлз Лэм цитаты

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„Богатство идет на пользу, ибо экономит время.“

„Достаток в старости — продление молодости.“

„Мы читаем, чтобы сказать, что мы это читали.“

„Хорошего без плохого не бывает — даже школьнику на каникулы дают задание.“

„Мой девиз таков: довольствоваться малым, но желать большего.“

„Стихия любого человека, я глубоко убежден в этом, не труд, а созерцание.“

„Чем смехотворнее ошибки, которые совершает человек в вашем присутствии, тем больше вероятность того, что он не предаст, не перехитрит вас.“

„Живопись слишком слаба, чтобы изобразить человека.“

„Контрабандист — это единственный честный вор, ведь крадет он только у государства.“

„Все новости, за исключением цены на хлеб, бессмысленны и неуместны.“

„Величайшее из известных мне удовольствий — совершить доброе дело украдкой и увидеть, как случайно обнаружатся его плоды.“

„Я прожил пятьдесят лет, но если вычесть из них те часы, что я жил для других, а не для себя, то окажется, что я еще в пеленках.“

„Итак, снова наступает апрель, и, насколько я вижу, в мире ещё больше дураков, чем когда-либо.“

„Газеты всегда возбуждают любопытство и никогда его не оправдывают.“

„Воображение — кобылка резвая. Одно плохо: перед ней слишком много дорог.“

„Я ко всему могу относиться равнодушно. Равнодушно — но не одинаково.“

„Уж не знаю почему, но в ситуациях, где приличествует скорбеть, я не могу подавить в себе необыкновенную игривость мысли.“

„Как существо чувствующее я склонен к гармонии, однако как существу мыслящему она мне претит.“

“The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.”

“For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.”

“Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, nor for Handel.”

“I have something more to do than to feel.”

“I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.”

“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

“Not if I know myself at all.”

“If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.”

“Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!”

“MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. —With me “the former things are passed away,” and I have something more to do that [than] to feel. God almighty have us all in his keeping.”

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

“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further… God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”

“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.”

“A good-natured woman…which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor.”

“Things in books' clothing.”

“Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”

“Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
.........
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
.........
Sabbath-less Satan!”

“Neat, not gaudy.”

“Books think for me.”

“Books which are no books.”

“I came home for ever!”

“This very night I am going to leave off Tobacco!”

“I have no ear.”

“Atheists, or Deists only in the name,
By word or deed deny a God. They eat
Their daily bread, & draw the breath of heaven,
Without a thought or thanks; heav'n's roof to them
Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps,
No more, that light them to their purposes.
They 'wander loose about.'”