Quote

When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.

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
Judgment
Literature
Understanding
Pain
Heart
Saves
World
Flies
Pains
Judging

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
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
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
My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.
Laurence Sterne
Image
We are born to trouble and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Ten cooks' shops! ...and all within three minutes' driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world ...had said - Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating - they are all gourmands - we shall rank high.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught.
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
I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.
Laurence Sterne