Laurence Sterne Quotes

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.

A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.

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.

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

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.

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

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

There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.

Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.

Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.

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.

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.

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.

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

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.

The best hearts are ever the bravest.

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?

Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.

It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.

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.

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 no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.

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

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.

A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.

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

Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

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

To saya man is fallen in love,or that he is deeply in love,or up to the ears in love,and sometimes even over head and ears in it,carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,I hold to be damnable and heretical:and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will,my uncleToby fell into it.

People who overly take care of their health are like misers. They hoard up a treasure which they never enjoy.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.

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.

Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.

The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.

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.

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

Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.

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.

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.

Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin; — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.

What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!

The brave only know how to forgive.

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.

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.

I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.