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That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the bst-- I'm sure it is the most religious-- for I begin with writing the first sentence-- and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Firsts
Begin
Book
Beginning
Trusting
First
Second
Almighty
Writing
Ways
Sentence
Way
Practice
Confident
World
Sure
Several
Religious
Throughout
Known
Sentences

More quotes by 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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Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.
Laurence Sterne
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For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
Laurence Sterne
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All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.
Laurence Sterne
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Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
Laurence Sterne
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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
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The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.
Laurence Sterne
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An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
Laurence Sterne
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The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
Laurence Sterne
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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
Laurence Sterne
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Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Laurence Sterne
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Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
Laurence Sterne
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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
Laurence Sterne
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Only the brave know how to forgive it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
Laurence Sterne
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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
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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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Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.
Laurence Sterne
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Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.
Laurence Sterne
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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