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
Laurence Sterne quotes about
plato love-is men
To saya man is fallen in love,or that he is deeply in love,or up to the ears in love,and sometimes even over head and ears in it,carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,I hold to be damnable and heretical:and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will,my uncleToby fell into it.
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.
good-night lying heart
A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.
holy-days miracle saint
Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?
tickets chance virtue
The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.
vicissitudes
The sad vicissitude of things.
human-nature humans profession
Human nature is the same in all professions.
hypocrisy religion christianity
There is not a greater paradox in nature,--than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.
imagination mind plight
When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,--prays without ceasing 'till his imagination is heated,--fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbancesof an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God].
dwarves size standards
A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.
literature asks pens
But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it.
generosity may casual
Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
leaving genius letters
As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.
complaining sometimes force
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.