Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne Quotes
179 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
We are born to trouble; and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
An inward sincerity will of course influence the outward deportment; but where the one is wanting, there is great reason to suspect the absence of the other.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
Science is intelligent curiosity, an organized thinking replacing a primitive wonder.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
The truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it:Mthe best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was "a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion"--I forget where.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it, as a sure maxim: "That women are timid:" And 'tis well they are--else there would beno dealing with them.
Laurence Sterne
Source
Report...
If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.
Laurence Sterne
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Laurence Sterne
Creative Commons
Born:
November 24, 1713
Died:
March 18, 1768
(aged 54)
Bio:
Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman.
Known for:
3 Books by Laurence Sterne (1759)
A Political Romance (1759)
The works of Laurence Sterne
Journal to Eliza
Most used words:
man
life
toby
soul
father
uncle
quoth
set
heart
word
kind
bad
mind
conversation
room
Laurence Sterne on Wikipedia
Laurence Sterne works on Gutenberg Project
Laurence Sterne works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Laurence Sterne Quotes
Laurence Sterne Short Quotes
English Novelist Quotes
Novelist Quotes
18th-century Novelist Quotes
Related People
Henry Fielding
English Novelist
Samuel Richardson
English Novelist
Tobias Smollett
British Author
Jonathan Swift
Irish Essayist
James Joyce
Irish Novelist
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes