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 imagina… - Laurence Sterne

Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular instance, — That such a thing goes against his conscience, — always believe he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes against his stomach; — a present want of appetite being generally the true cause of both. ‘In a word, — trust that man in nothing, who has not a Conscience in every thing.

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; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume — and no farther than to my first day's life — 'tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it — on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back —