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
hundred ten thou
For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies.
writing firsts almighty-god
I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
desire increases thirst
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst for riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
respect self-esteem morality
Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
kings men thinking
So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse 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?
success pain light
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
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.
reading winter sunshine
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
travel owing littles
Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.
prayer easy duty
Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
hands able actors
An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
writing next firsts
I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next.
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.
reading men stronger
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.