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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
Affair
Shame
Neither
Sin
Moon

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.
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It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
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It is a great pity but tis certain from every day's observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end provided there is a sufficient wick standing out.
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Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.
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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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Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
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My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.
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I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.
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When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.
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I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us--but I seldom resist him at all from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat--soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.
Laurence Sterne
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An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
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
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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?
Laurence Sterne
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Dear sensibility! Source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! Eternal fountain of our feelings! 'tis here I trace thee and this is thy divinity which stirs within me...All comes from thee, great-great SENSORIUM of the world!
Laurence Sterne
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The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
Laurence Sterne
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It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.
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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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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.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne