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My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Truth
Event
Mean
Rate
Every
Whose
Way
Events
Never
Force
Men
Means
Father
Crucified
Nature
Hypothesis

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When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
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Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
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The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.
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To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.
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The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
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Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.
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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.
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We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
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An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
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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.
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Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.
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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.
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A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
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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.
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In all unmerciful actions, the worst of men pay this compliment at least to humanity, as to endeavour to wear as much of the appearance of it, as the case will well let them.
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There are many ways of inducing sleep--the thinking of purling rills, or waving woods reckoning of numbers droppings from a wet sponge fixed over a brass pan, etc. But temperance and exercise answer much better than any of these succedaneums.
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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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Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?
Laurence Sterne
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The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.
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Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.
Laurence Sterne