Frasi di Charles Lamb

pagina 2

“Gorgoni, Idre, Chimere e le orrende storie di Celeno e delle Arpie si possono ricreare nel cervello della superstizione: ma sono esistite prima. Sono trascrizioni di archetipi sono in noi, e che sono eterni… Questi terrori non nascono col corpo, ma prima del corpo, e senza il corpo esisterebbero ugualmente… Se potessimo spiegarli, sapremmo finalmente qualcosa sulla nostra condizione preumana, e uno spiraglio si aprirebbe sul fittissimo buio della preesistenza.”

“I più grandi scritti, quelli che tolgono il fiato o che ci strappano una lacrima, hanno bisogno di essere concepiti in un luogo suggestivo: un ermo colle, una pioggia in un pineto o in una silenziosa notte stellata, scandita solamente dal frastagliarsi delle onde che si abbattono su di una scogliera poco lontana.”

“È il privilegio dell'amicizia per dire cose senza senso e per far rispettare le sue sciocchezze.”

“I libri pensano per me.”

“I presenti […] rendono cari gli assenti.”

“La malattia, come ingrandisce le dimensioni di un uomo ai suoi stessi occhi!”

“La specie umana, secondo la migliore teoria che posso formarmi su di essa, è composta di due razze distinte, gli uomini che prendono a prestito e gli uomini che prestano.”

“Ma le carte sono una guerra, travestita da giuoco.”

“Per amor tuo, Tabacco, sono pronto a fare qualsiasi cosa fuorché morire.”

“Per aver sentimenti nobili, non è necessario esser nati nobili.”

“Un uomo che rifiuta le frittelle di mele non può avere un'anima pura.”

“Di tutto il suono di tutte le campane … il più solenne e toccante è lo scampanio che risuona alla fine dell'Anno Vecchio.”

“Arrivo sempre in ritardo in ufficio, ma lo compenso lasciando presto.”

“[Of Coleridge] His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged.”

“Far transcend my weak invention.
’Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her store of script’ral knowledge
(Bible-taught without a college)
Which by reading she could gather,
Teaches him to say Our Father
To the common Parent, who
Colour not respects nor hue.
White and Black in him have part,
Who looks not to the skin, but heart.”

“Nay, rather,
Plant divine, of rarest virtue;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.”

“Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.”

“Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.”

“The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.”

“Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.”

“A presentation copy…is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.”

“Thou through such a mist dost show us,
That our best friends do not know us.”

“Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the 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. Gilman's did the business for me."”

“For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.”

“Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?”

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

“Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?”

“I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!”

“It is good to love the unknown.”

“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.”

“When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!”

“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.”

“I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition 's shown;
And all that history, much that fiction weaves.”

“Presents, I often say, endear absents.”

“Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.”

“Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights’ sensations.”

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

“Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.”

“Severe and saintly righteousness
Composed the clear white bridal dress;
Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King
Bought with his blood the marriage ring”

“A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.”

“Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it …”

“Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”