60 Laurence Sterne Quotes

Laurence Sterne quotes

1. Only the brave know how to forgive...A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.

2. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

3. 'Pray, my dear,' quoth my mother, 'have you not forgot to wind up the clock?' - 'Good G-!' cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, - 'Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?'

4. So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

5. For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies.

6. He was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip forever.

7. Whistled up to London, upon a Tom Fool's errand.

8. 'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause - and of obstinacy in a bad one.

9. Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him, - and, withall, he had so shrewd guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent, - that NATURE might have stood up and said, - 'This man is eloquent.'

10. Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; -& they are the life, the soul of reading; - take them out of this book for instance, - you might as well take the book along with them.

11. The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.

12. The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

13. Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

14. Go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? - This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

15. Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.

16. Great wits jump.

17. Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby, - but nothing to this. - For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.

18. Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

19. As for the clergy - No - If I say a word against them, I'll be shot. - I have no desire, - and besides, if I had, - I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, - with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, - and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, - and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.

20. I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma - let him get off as he can.

21. It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, - not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air - but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad.

22. Now or never was the time.

23. Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?

24. My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength - and his weakness, too. - His strength - for he was by nature eloquent - and his weakness - for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one - (bating the case of a systematic misfortune)- he had all he wanted.- A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune was as five - my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.

25. I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a Northwest Passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.

26. The Accusing Spirit which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it in; and the Recording Angel as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever.

27. A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.

28. I am sick as a horse.

29. Ho! 'tis the time of salads.

30. I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.

31. When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first - and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment - 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

32. L-d! said my mother, what is all this story about? - A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick - And one of the best of its kind I ever heard.

33. They order, said I, this matter better in France.

34. I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!

35. Tant pis and tant mieux, being two of the great hinges in French conversation, a stranger would do well to set himself right in the use of them before he gets to Paris.

36. Hail, ye small, sweet courtesies of life! for smooth do ye make the road of it.

37. God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

38. We get forwards in the world not so much by doing services, as receiving them: you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it.

39. 'Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery', said I, 'still thou art a bitter draught'.

40. The sad vicissitude of things.

1. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

2. The insolence of base minds in success is boundless; and would scarce admit of a comparison, did not they themselves furnish us with one in the degrees of their abjection when evil returns upon them.

3. The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

4. Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.

5. I was acquainted once with a gallant soldier who assured me that his only measure of courage was this: upon the first fire, in an engagement, he immediately looked upon himself as a dead man. He then bravely fought out the remainder of the day, perfectly regardless of all manner of danger, as becomes a dead man to be. So that all the life or limbs he carried back again to his tent he reckoned as clear gains, or, as he himself expressed it, so much out of the fire.

6. A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining; rumple the one, you rumple the other.

7. When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.

8. Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! - long - long since had ye numbered out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights; and have taken a few turns on it, come back strengthened and refreshed ...

9. Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.

10. Dear sensibility! Source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! Eternal fountain of our feelings! 'tis here I trace thee and this is thy divinity which stirs within me...All comes from thee, great-great SENSORIUM of the world!

11. The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.

12. Beauty has so many charms, one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportion raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it,--and something to the embellishments which set it off; and yet, when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.

13. The best hearts are ever the bravest.

14. Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.

15. There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let penetrating eye at once into a man's soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, --or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.

16. Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.

17. The desire of knowledge, like the thirst for riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

18. Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

19. Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.

20. The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time; andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.