Laurence Sterne - Mind Quotes

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When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.

Laurence Sterne
In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

Laurence Sterne
The very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit. it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz., A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.

Laurence Sterne
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.

Laurence Sterne
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.

Laurence Sterne
It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind; and what incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things, that trifles light as air shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immovable within it, that Euclid's demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it!

Laurence Sterne
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
The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.

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

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