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
Envy
Captives
Tasks
Gate
Fame
Chain
Hand
Opens
Death
Gates
Another
Puts
Hands
Chains
Shuts
Men
Task
Captive

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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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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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.
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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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I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
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Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
Laurence Sterne
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...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
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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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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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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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When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
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If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body--and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,--then certes the soul does not inhabit there.
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.
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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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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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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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Only the brave know how to forgive it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
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A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.
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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?
Laurence Sterne