ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying? — Nothing. - Laurence Sterne

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

I could wish to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own by. It is for this reason that I have not seen the Palais Royal - nor the facade of the Louvre - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches - I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself.

— Now my father had a way, a little like that of Job's (in case there ever was such a man — if not, there's an end of the matter. — Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in fixing the precise æra in which so great a man lived; — whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c. — to vote, therefore, that he never lived at all, is a little cruel, — 'tis not doing as they would be done by — happen that as it — My father, I say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience — of wondering why he was begot, — wishing himself dead; — sometimes worse: —