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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.

Laurence Sterne

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Laurence Sterne
Age: 54 †
Born: 1713
Born: November 24
Died: 1768
Died: March 18
Autobiographer
Novelist
Religious
Writer
Every
Instruction
World
Wit
Education
Knowledge
Bigs
Father
Find
Thing
Jest

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

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Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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The brave only know how to forgive.
Laurence Sterne
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Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
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.
Laurence Sterne
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Ten cooks' shops! ...and all within three minutes' driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world ...had said - Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating - they are all gourmands - we shall rank high.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne
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Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
Laurence Sterne
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A coward never forgives.
Laurence Sterne
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I never drink. I cannot do it, on equal terms with others. It costs them only one day but me three, the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.
Laurence Sterne
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If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
Laurence Sterne
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...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
Laurence Sterne
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Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
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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There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion--I forget where.
Laurence Sterne
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Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.
Laurence Sterne
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When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.
Laurence Sterne
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There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.
Laurence Sterne
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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.
Laurence Sterne