Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sternewas an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, and also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 November 1713
CountryIreland
travel men world
I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren--and so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers.
austin stories world
The improbability of a malicious story serves but to help forward the currency of it, because it increases the scandal. So that, in such instances, the world is like the pious St. Austin, who said he believed some things because they were absurd and impossible.
silly men world
Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
friends world may
The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.
work world ashamed
The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
heaven world charity
Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
book soul world
I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.
water world receiving
We get forwards in the world not so much by doing services, as receiving them: you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it.
world may trouble
We are born to trouble; and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
objection smell strong
I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell too strong of the lamp.
along appetite book brings cold external forbids forth might page reign restore soul steps winter
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 external 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.
best-friends fool permanent
You can always tell a real friend; when you've made a fool of yourself, he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
absurd adds certainty lessens shame
Positiveness is an absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph; if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
along behind compels man neither quietly rides
So long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?