All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the passage of time and the loss of familiar people in one's life.
Charles Lamb's quote expresses a deep sense of nostalgia and melancholy as he contemplates the absence of the people who once filled his life with familiarity and comfort. The phrase 'old familiar faces' implies a longing for connections that have faded away due to time or change, highlighting the transient nature of relationships and the bittersweet reality of growing older.
In practice
In a memorial speech for a loved one, this quote can evoke shared memories.
Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.
As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, So deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So dark when I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.
Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die.
May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.
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.
Unless you really understand others, you can hardly attain your own self-understanding.
Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be.
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.
It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.
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