Quote

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

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
Digressions
Sunshine
Reading
Soul
Life

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.
Laurence Sterne
Image
It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
Laurence Sterne
Image
If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.
Laurence Sterne
Image
'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An English man does not travel to see English men.
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
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
Image
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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
Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
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
Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
Laurence Sterne