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What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Men
Shift
Life
Sorrow
Cause
Side
Sides
Causes
Vexation
Existence
Button
Another
Buttons

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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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.
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When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
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Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
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It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
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The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.
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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
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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!
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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.
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Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
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Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.
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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.
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When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.
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An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
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I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
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Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
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Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught.
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The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.
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'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
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We are born to trouble and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
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An English man does not travel to see English men.
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