Quote

I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.

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
Best
Persuaded
Men
Bear
Bears
Sorrow
Position
Pleasure
Woman
Aught
Pain
Horizontal

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Image
A coward never forgives.
Laurence Sterne
Image
I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Laurence Sterne
Image
An English man does not travel to see English men.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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?
Laurence Sterne
Image
When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.
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
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
Laurence Sterne
Image
When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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
Image
There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let penetrating eye at once into a man's soul and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, --or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
Laurence Sterne
Image
Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?
Laurence Sterne
Image
Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.
Laurence Sterne
Image
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.
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
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
'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
Laurence Sterne