Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of t… - Laurence Sterne

— 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: —

As for the clergy — No — If I say a word against them, I'll be shot. — I have no desire, — and besides, if I had, — I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, — with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, — and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, — and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.

It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James’s, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ’ere mercy is to vanish with them? — but ’tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavor to make ’em so.

(Excerpt from letter to Ignatius Sancho)