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For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
Laurence Sterne
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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Ten
Jokes
Hundred
Enemy
Every
Acquire
Enemies
More quotes by Laurence Sterne
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.
Laurence Sterne
First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake.
Laurence Sterne
...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
Laurence Sterne
Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.
Laurence Sterne
O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.
Laurence Sterne
Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
Laurence Sterne
There are few instances of the exercise of particular virtues which seem harder to attain to, or which appear more amiable and engaging in themselves, than those of moderation and the forgiveness of injuries.
Laurence Sterne
Go, poor devil, get thee gone! Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
Laurence Sterne
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.
Laurence Sterne
In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon herself in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports--the feigned compassion of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth--they all deceive, and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.
Laurence Sterne
Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.
Laurence Sterne
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
Laurence Sterne
Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?
Laurence Sterne
There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.
Laurence Sterne
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.
Laurence Sterne
It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.
Laurence Sterne
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
Laurence Sterne
I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.
Laurence Sterne
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
Laurence Sterne
An English man does not travel to see English men.
Laurence Sterne