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...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Never
Like
Plainest
Glorious
Goes
Beauty
Truth

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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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?
Laurence Sterne
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Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.
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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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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I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
Laurence Sterne
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We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
Laurence Sterne
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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
Laurence Sterne
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There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.
Laurence Sterne
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A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!
Laurence Sterne
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The brave only know how to forgive.
Laurence Sterne
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I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Laurence Sterne
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Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep.
Laurence Sterne
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Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures--but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
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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When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
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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People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
Laurence Sterne