"Elia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not one of my friends," said Mr. Linden smiling—"not even an acquaintance. In fact I never even set a chair for him, as the woman in Elia set a chair for the poor relation, saying, 'perhaps he will step in to-day.' I have been busy, doctor—what shall I do to amuse you? will ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem." Let us, then, laugh at what is laughable while we are yet clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay," for, as delightful Elia asks, "Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt sides if we be ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... House. —He is greatest as a writer of prose; and his prose is, in its way, unequalled for sweetness, grace, humour, and quaint terms, among the writings of this century. His best prose work is the Essays of Elia, which show on every page the most whimsical and humorous subtleties, a quick play of intellect, and a deep sympathy with the sorrows and the joys of men. Very little verse came from his pen. "Charles Lamb's nosegay of verse," says Professor Dowden, "may ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... the only man now surviving who knew much of the excellent "Elia." Assuredly I knew him more intimately than any other existing person, during the last seventeen or eighteen years of ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy with Elia, you never think about them as tricks at all. Now this naturalness—it can hardly be said too often here—is the one thing needful in letters. The different forms of it may be as various and as ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... childhood of western men—unlike, and yet similar in their generous persuasions on all pure young hearts—upon whose "Decay" might, also, be written a "Complaint," which should come as truly, and yet as sadly, from the heart of him, who remembers his boyhood, as did that from the heart of Elia. Gatherings of the militia, burgou-hunts, barbecues, and anniversaries—phases of a primitive, yet true and hearty time!—are fast giving way, before the march of a barbarous "progress" (erroneously christened) "of intelligence." The hard spirit of money-getting, the harder spirit ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... he cast away in exchange for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we see the brother and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In estimating the humour of Elia, we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune and pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So he becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater |
