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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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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Spirit
Extraordinary
Inquisition
Nature
Among
Depravity
Human
Difference
Auto
Humans
Differences
Crusades
Thing
Opinion
Pagan
Pagans
Never
Since
Intolerance
Tenets
Happened
Persecution
Crusade
Religious
Appears
Diabolical

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?
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People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Laurence Sterne
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Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?
Laurence Sterne
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So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
Laurence Sterne
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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.
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.
Laurence Sterne
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Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
Laurence Sterne
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There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.
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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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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I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.
Laurence Sterne
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The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,--where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.
Laurence Sterne
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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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A coward never forgives.
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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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.
Laurence Sterne