Laurence Sterne famous quotes

I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Life #Eye #Simple

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Respect #Self Esteem #Ethics

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Tire #Pursuit

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Writing #Thinking #Talking

If thou art rich, then show the greatness of thy fortune; or what is better, the greatness of thy soul, in the meekness of thy conversation; condescend to men of low estate, support the distressed, and patronize the neglected. Be great.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Art #Greatness #Men

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Reading #Winter #Sunshine

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 him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
-- Laurence Sterne

#Kings #Thinking #Men

Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Success #Pain #Light

An English man does not travel to see English men.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Doe #Funny Travel

I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Writing #Firsts #Almighty

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 what they were about when they begot me.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Mother #Father #Wish

An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Hands #Actors #Able

Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Change #Ideas #Literature

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Motivational #Forgiveness #Brave

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Motivational #Education #Business

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

#Strength #Wisdom #Loneliness

Only the brave know how to forgive... a coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Forgiveness #Brave #Forgiving

I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Writing #Next #Firsts

Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Prayer #Easy #Duty

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

#Inward #Influence #Sincerity

I was acquainted once with a gallant soldier who assured me that his only measure of courage was this: upon the first fire, in an engagement, he immediately looked upon himself as a dead man. He then bravely fought out the remainder of the day, perfectly regardless of all manner of danger, as becomes a dead man to be. So that all the life or limbs he carried back again to his tent he reckoned as clear gains, or, as he himself expressed it, so much out of the fire.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Fire #Soldier

There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Talking #Ancient

A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Dwarves #Size #Standards

But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Literature #Pens

Ten cooks' shops! ...and all within three minutes' driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world ...had said - Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating - they are all gourmands - we shall rank high.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Thinking #Paris #French Love

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

#Art #Blessed #Health

An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Atheist #Ignorance #Superstitions

How frequently is the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped With the imputation of proceeding from bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!
-- Laurence Sterne

#Honesty #Integrity #Men

If time, like money, could be laid by while one was not using it, there might be some excuse for the idleness of half of the world, but yet not a full one. For even this would be such an economy as the living on a principal sum, without making it purchase interest.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Time #Would Be #Half

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

#Sympathy #Giving Up #Heart

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

#Fire #Ignorant #Matter

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Book #Soul #World

So fruitful is slander in variety of expedients to satiate as well as disguise itself. But if these smoother weapons cut so sore, what shall we say of open and unblushing scandal, subjected to no caution, tied down to no restraints?
-- Laurence Sterne

#Cutting #Weapons #Scandal

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

#Heart #Loss #Men

There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Sweet #Sleep #Hands

Keep away from the fire!
-- Laurence Sterne

#Fire #Temptation

There are many ways of inducing sleep--the thinking of purling rills, or waving woods; reckoning of numbers; droppings from a wet sponge fixed over a brass pan, etc. But temperance and exercise answer much better than any of these succedaneums.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Sleep #Exercise #Thinking

In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon herself; in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports--the feigned compassion of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth--they all deceive, and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Retirement #Book #Reflection

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Leaving #Genius #Letters

The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Heaven #Way #Fame

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

#Passion #Men #Return

It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Religious #Differences #Spirit

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense end knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Essence #Long

Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Generosity #May #Casual

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

#Taken #Feet #Velvet

Great is the power of Eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Children #Tears #Culprit

I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Evil #Laughing

Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Daughter #Son #Vanity

Now or never was the time.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Now Or Never

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

#Heart #Wind #Giving

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

#Vices #Dishonesty #Murder

Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Humility #Expression #Ornaments

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

#Death #Stress #Bed

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

#Death #Men #Hands

Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Heaven #World #Charity

The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Adversity #Comfort #May

Beauty has so many charms, one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportion raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it,--and something to the embellishments which set it off; and yet, when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Beauty #Humility #Heart

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

#Wise #Book #Reading

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

#Mind #Receiving #May

If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Pride #Men #Done

Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Dancing #Gentleman #Excuse

Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Sleep #Men #Literature

Solomon'sexcess became an insult upon the privileges of mankind; for by the same plan of luxury, which made it necessary to have forty thousand stalls of horses,--he had unfortunately miscalculated his other wants, and so had seven hundred wives.... Wise--deluded man!
-- Laurence Sterne

#Wise #Horse #Men

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

#Character #Men #Thinking

The proper education of poor children [is] the ground-work of almost every other kind of charity.... Without this foundation firstlaid, how much kindnessis unavoidably cast away?
-- Laurence Sterne

#Education #Children #Foundation

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

#Travel #Owing #Littles

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren--and so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Travel #Men #World

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

#Strong #Horse #Farewell

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

#Kindness #Passion #Heart

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

#Success #Failure #Evil

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

#Passion #Heart #Iron

Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Funny #Book #Years

[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Motivation #Princess #Passion

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Ambition #Pride #Purpose

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

#Adventure #Knights #Soul

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

#Men #Skills #Luck

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

#Imagination #Mind #Plight

I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us--but I seldom resist him at all; from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat--soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Hurt #Thinking #Temptation

True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro' its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and chearfully round.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Running #Heart #Health

Injuries come only from the heart.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Heart #Injury #Goodness

Look into the world--how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man's affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Heart #Men #Hypocrisy

Every obstruction of the course of justice,--is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has inview.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Blessing #Doors #Law

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Heart #Adventure #Eye

We all cry out that the world is corrupt,--and I fear too justly,--but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Encouragement #Evil #Giving

The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time; andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Ideas #Imagination

So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,--both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT--as his RESISTANCE.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Men #Degrees #Warfare

Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Education #Father #Knowledge

How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Country #War #Air

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

#Good Night #Lying #Heart

Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?
-- Laurence Sterne

#Miracle #Saint #Eternity

The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Mother #Loneliness

Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Writing #Wine #Flavor

The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Work #World #Ashamed

The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Tickets #Chance #Virtue

Endless is the search of truth.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Truth #Endless

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

#World #May #Trouble

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

#Names #Broken #Joy

There is not a greater paradox in nature,--than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Hypocrisy #Religion #Christianity

The great end of all religionis to purify our hearts--and conquer our passions--and in a word, to make us wiser and better men--better neighbours--better citizens--and better servants of GOD.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Passion #Heart #Character

But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Knowledge #Loss #Dark