Laurence Sterne Quotes

179 Sourced Quotes

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.

Laurence Sterne
Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves.

Laurence Sterne
There are few instances of the exercise of particular virtues which seem harder to attain to, or which appear more amiable and engaging in themselves, than those of moderation and the forgiveness of injuries.

Laurence Sterne
A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.

Laurence Sterne
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 rosebuds of delights; and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.

Laurence Sterne
When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head- strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion.

Laurence Sterne
Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a death-bed repentance is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all on.

Laurence Sterne
When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!

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

Laurence Sterne
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?

Laurence Sterne
In a word, he would say, error was error, — no matter where it fell, — whether in a fraction, — or a pound, — 'twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by mistake in the dust of a butterfly's win, — as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together.

Laurence Sterne