Quote

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

Laurence Sterne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Next
Miles
Cottage
Live
Door
Cottages
Mountain
Mile
Asked
Italy
Doors
Replied
Single
Venture
Habitation
Alone
Providence
Hermit
Literature
Neighbor
Hermits

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.
Laurence Sterne
Image
I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.
Laurence Sterne
Image
People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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?
Laurence Sterne
Image
There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion--I forget where.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An English man does not travel to see English men.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the bst-- I'm sure it is the most religious-- for I begin with writing the first sentence-- and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Laurence Sterne
Image
For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
Image
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
Laurence Sterne
Image
I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Human nature is the same in all professions.
Laurence Sterne
Image
We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Laurence Sterne