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Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Reading
Soul
Life
Digressions
Sunshine

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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There is not a greater paradox in nature,--than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.
Laurence Sterne
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Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
Laurence Sterne
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In all unmerciful actions, the worst of men pay this compliment at least to humanity, as to endeavour to wear as much of the appearance of it, as the case will well let them.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us--but I seldom resist him at all from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat--soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.
Laurence Sterne
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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
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Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Laurence Sterne
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Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
Laurence Sterne
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Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Laurence Sterne
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Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
Laurence Sterne
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Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.
Laurence Sterne
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People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
Laurence Sterne
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If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body--and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,--then certes the soul does not inhabit there.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.
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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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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An English man does not travel to see English men.
Laurence Sterne