Laurence Sterne Quotes

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.

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything.

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;-and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,-then certes the soul does not inhabit there.

« Je suis persuadé que chaque fois qu'un homme sourit et mieux encore lorsqu'il rit, il ajoute quelque chose à la durée de sa vie.»

  Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.
  Not I, quoth my uncle.
   - But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about. -
  No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.

- I won't go about to argue the point with you, - 'tis so, - and I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, "That both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.

- all I can say of the matter, is - That he has either a pumkin for his head - or a pippin for his heart, - and whenever he is dissected 'twill be found so.

- My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman.
- Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.

We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them

I begin with writing the first
sentence - and trusting to Almighty
God for the second.