[T]he worst of human maladies is poverty — though that is a second lye — for poverty of spirit is worse than poverty of purse, by ten thousand per ce… - Laurence Sterne

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 consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;

my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin, — Dr. Slop would never have given them up; — and my uncle Toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it. When a proposition can be taken in two senses — ’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him. — This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side. — ‘Good God!’ cried my uncle Toby, ‘are children brought into the world with a squirt?

The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them;—they are not so pleasant to feel,—but in return the legend is so visible, that at the first look you see whose image and superscription they bear.