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Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Freethinker
Infidelity
Generally
Never
Think
Thinking
Freethinkers

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Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught.
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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?
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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.
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When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
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Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?
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We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
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Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
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When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.
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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.
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The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
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I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?
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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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So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,--both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT--as his RESISTANCE.
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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.
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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