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I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Shame
Neither
Sin
Moon
Affair

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The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
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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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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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I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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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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Digressions incontestably are the sunshine they are the life, the soul of reading.
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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
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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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Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
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The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance.
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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
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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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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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There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion--I forget where.
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It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
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The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.
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'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
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When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.
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Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.
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