Quote

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

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
Another
Buttons
Men
Shift
Life
Sorrow
Cause
Side
Sides
Causes
Vexation
Existence
Button

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
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
Image
The brave only know how to forgive.
Laurence Sterne
Image
So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,--at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body andif a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for itI'll go to the world's end with him:MBut I hate disputes.
Laurence Sterne
Image
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
There are many ways of inducing sleep--the thinking of purling rills, or waving woods reckoning of numbers droppings from a wet sponge fixed over a brass pan, etc. But temperance and exercise answer much better than any of these succedaneums.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Look into the world--how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man's affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.
Laurence Sterne
Image
The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
What persons are by starts they are by nature.
Laurence Sterne
Image
The best hearts are ever the bravest.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Only the brave know how to forgive it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
Laurence Sterne
Image
There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word--a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures--but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Laurence Sterne