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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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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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An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
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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.
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People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
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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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The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
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I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.
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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!
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Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.
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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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First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake.
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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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.
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A coward never forgives.
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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A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.
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We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.
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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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If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.
Laurence Sterne
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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