Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Every
Year
Casts
Years
Common
Thousands
Lives
Competition
War
Countries
Comes
Consider
Nationalism
Away
Air
Hypothesis
Country
Least
Civilized
Many
Politics
Cast

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
Look into the world--how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man's affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.
Laurence Sterne
Image
The best hearts are ever the bravest.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
We are born to trouble and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
Laurence Sterne
Image
When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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?
Laurence Sterne
Image
Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An English man does not travel to see English men.
Laurence Sterne
Image
A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
Laurence Sterne