Quote

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Take
Tune
Writing
Tunes
Like
Lows
World
High
Song
Write
Book
Madam
Matter
Humming

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.
Laurence Sterne
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Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
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How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.
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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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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
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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
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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 way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
Laurence Sterne
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Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?
Laurence Sterne
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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
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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
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When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.
Laurence Sterne
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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
Laurence Sterne
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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
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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
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There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let penetrating eye at once into a man's soul and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, --or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.
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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There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.
Laurence Sterne