Laurence Sterne Quotes

We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained “it could not get out.” — I look’d up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, or child, I went out without further attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. — “I can’t get out — I can’t get out,” said the starling.
I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach’d it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. — “I can’t get out,” said the starling. — God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turn’d about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. — I took both hands to it.
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, press’d his breast against it, as if impatient. — I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. — “No,” said the starling — “I can’t get out — I can’t get out,” said the starling.

A true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. His own ideas are only call'd forth by what he reads, and the vibrations within, so entirely correspond with those excited, 'tis like reading himself and not the book.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me to the contrary.

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

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

A man cannot dress but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time, and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination.

o si existiera la certeza de que el amor propio jamás puede ejercer la menor influencia sobre el juicio;

[O]f all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best — I'm sure it is the most religious — for I begin with writing the first sentence — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimulates every thing to itself as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.

Time wastes too fast… the days and hours of it… are flying over our heads like little clouds on a windy day, never to return more – everything presses on – whilst thou art twisting the lock, - see! it grows grey… and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!

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

Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock? — Good G — ! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, — — Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying? — — — — Nothing.

Every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of life.

— My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman. — Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.