Laurence Sterne Quotes

110 quotes in 1484 categories

• Chance is the providence of adventurers.
• A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.
• 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…
• To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.
• An English man does not travel to see English men.
• Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
• 'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
• It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and,…
• First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of…
• Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst - the cant of…
• I'll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why…
• All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is…
• The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
• A coward never forgives.
• Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.
• Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
• To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or…
• 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,…
• Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
• 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…

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