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I never drink. I cannot do it, on equal terms with others. It costs them only one day but me three, the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Others
Thirds
Three
Terms
Cannot
Cost
Repenting
Firsts
Drink
Intemperance
First
Equal
Sinning
Never
Second
Repent
Term
Costs
Suffering
Third

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Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.
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When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
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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.
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Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep.
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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.
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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
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If time, like money, could be laid by while one was not using it, there might be some excuse for the idleness of half of the world, but yet not a full one. For even this would be such an economy as the living on a principal sum, without making it purchase interest.
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[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.
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A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.
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A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
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People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
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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.
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Is it not an amazing thing, that men shall attempt to investigate the mystery of the redemption, when, at the same time that it is propounded to us as an article of faith solely, we are told that the very angels have desired to pry into it in vain?
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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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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.
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Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
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When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head- strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion.
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Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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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.
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