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The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
World
Virtuous
Ashamed
Work

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
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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.
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Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
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I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.
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What persons are by starts they are by nature.
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Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.
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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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But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.
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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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It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
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There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.
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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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Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.
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I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
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A coward never forgives.
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Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
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Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.
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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.
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.
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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?
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