Laurence Sterne Quotes

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Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in infinitum; — that the grains and scruples were as much a part of it as the gravitation of the whole world.

Laurence Sterne
The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,--where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not.

Laurence Sterne
Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures--but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

Laurence Sterne
I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his Author's hands; be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.

Laurence Sterne
There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word--a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.

Laurence Sterne
Nature is shy, and hates to act before spectators.

Laurence Sterne
People who are always taking care of their health, are like misers, who are hoarding up treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.

Laurence Sterne
Some people pass through life soberly and religiously enough, without knowing way, or reasoning about it, but, from force of habit merely, go to heaven like fools.

Laurence Sterne
I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.

Laurence Sterne
Madness is consistent; which is more than can be said for poor reason. Whatever may be the ruling passion at the time continues equally so throughout the whole delirium, though it should last for life. Madmen are always constant in love; which no man in his senses ever was. Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy; but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.

Laurence Sterne
Attornies are to lawyers, what apothecaries are to physicians only that they do not deal in scruples.

Laurence Sterne
My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Laurence Sterne
Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late.

Laurence Sterne
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, — who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, — and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes — each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs — quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words.

Laurence Sterne
Probably Providence has implanted peevishness and ill-temper in sick and old persons, in compassion to the friends or relations who are to survive; as it must naturally lessen the concern they might otherwise feel for their loss.

Laurence Sterne
The cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix'd and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass — good g — ! everything turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools...

Laurence Sterne
Vain science! Thou assisted us in no case of this kind, and thou puzzlest us in everyone.

Laurence Sterne
Science is intelligent curiosity, an organized thinking replacing a primitive wonder.

Laurence Sterne
Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.

Laurence Sterne
It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass of heterogeneous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant was in Utero, without destroying the statistical balance of the foetus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months before the time.

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

Laurence Sterne
When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

Laurence Sterne
The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture.

Laurence Sterne
I never drink. I cannot do it, on equal terms with others. It costs them only one day; but me three, the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.

Laurence Sterne
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.

Laurence Sterne
When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,--prays without ceasing 'till his imagination is heated,--fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbancesof an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God].

Laurence Sterne
The laws of nature will defend themselves; — but error — (he would add, looking earnestly at my mother) — error, Sir, creeps in thro' the minute holes and small crevices which human nature leaves unguarded.

Laurence Sterne
I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?

Laurence Sterne
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.

Laurence Sterne
Art and science are words frequently made use of, but the precision of which is so rarely understood, that they are often mistaken for one another.

Laurence Sterne