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The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Way
Titles
People
Accomplished
Serve
Using
Books
Lord
Lords
Learn
Brag
Book
Acquaintance

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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Human nature is the same in all professions.
Laurence Sterne
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[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.
Laurence Sterne
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The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
Laurence Sterne
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Positiveness is a most absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
Laurence Sterne
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
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Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.
Laurence Sterne
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Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.
Laurence Sterne
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Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
Laurence Sterne
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A coward never forgives.
Laurence Sterne
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I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Laurence Sterne
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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
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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
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...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
Laurence Sterne
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What persons are by starts they are by nature.
Laurence Sterne
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Dear sensibility! Source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! Eternal fountain of our feelings! 'tis here I trace thee and this is thy divinity which stirs within me...All comes from thee, great-great SENSORIUM of the world!
Laurence Sterne
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Any one may do a casual act of good-nature but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
Laurence Sterne
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A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.
Laurence Sterne
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Is it not an amazing thing, that men shall attempt to investigate the mystery of the redemption, when, at the same time that it is propounded to us as an article of faith solely, we are told that the very angels have desired to pry into it in vain?
Laurence Sterne