Laurence Sterne Quotes

— So much motion, continues he, (for he was very corpulent) — is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.
Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy — and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil —

We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them

— for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her, — or (as circumstances directed), he would shake her by the hand, — or ask her lovingly how she did, — or would give her a ribban, — and now and then, though never but when it could be done with decorum, would give Bridget a —

Man is false to himself and betrays his own succours ten times where nature does it once.

When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.

'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause — and of obstinacy in a bad one.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!

For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies.

Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?

— 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.

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.

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

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; — — they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book, for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them; — one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer, — — he steps forth like a bridegroom, — bids All hail, brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story...

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.