Quote

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Hands
Chains
Shuts
Men
Task
Captive
Envy
Captives
Tasks
Gate
Fame
Chain
Hand
Opens
Death
Gates
Another
Puts

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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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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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?
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Positiveness is a most absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
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Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Laurence Sterne
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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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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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A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
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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For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
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
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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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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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That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the bst-- I'm sure it is the most religious-- for I begin with writing the first sentence-- and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Laurence Sterne
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There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word--a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.
Laurence Sterne
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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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Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep.
Laurence Sterne
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There are few instances of the exercise of particular virtues which seem harder to attain to, or which appear more amiable and engaging in themselves, than those of moderation and the forgiveness of injuries.
Laurence Sterne
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An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
Laurence Sterne
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Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
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