“So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,--at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; andif a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for itI'll go to the world's end with him:MBut I hate disputes.”
Quote by Laurence Sterne
“My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.”
Source: 3 Books by Laurence Sterne
“The circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape;--and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is--great--little--good--bad--indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters, &c. With a Life of the Author Written by Himself
“When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself
“Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it, as a sure maxim: "That women are timid:" And 'tis well they are--else there would beno dealing with them.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)
“But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.”
Source: Works, Containing the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters and C
“Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself
“So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,--both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT--as his RESISTANCE.”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters, &c. With a Life of the Author Written by Himself
“The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time; andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.”
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne, in One Volume
“I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author
