Top 100 Sterne Quotes
#1. For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Edmund Spenser
#2. If on a friend's bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.
Alexander Theroux
#3. I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
David Antin
#4. And future deeds crowded round us as the countless stars in the night.
[Ger., Und kunftige Thaten drangen wie die Sterne
Rings um uns her unzahlig aus der Nacht.]
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#5. I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inciting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.
Frederick William Robertson
#6. But The Master and Margarita is true to the broader sense of the novel as a freely developing form embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Gogol, of Swift and Sterne, of Cervantes, Rabelais and Apuleius.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#7. Sight is by much the noblest of the senses. We receive our notices from the other four, through the organs of sensation only. We hear, we feel, we smell, we taste, by touch. But sight rises infinitely higher. It is refined above matter, and equals the faculty of spirit.
Laurence Sterne
#8. I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.
Accordingly I set off thus:
Laurence Sterne
#9. 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
#10. ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying? - Nothing.
Laurence Sterne
#11. Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.
Laurence Sterne
#12. Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story ...
Laurence Sterne
#14. If thou art rich, then show the greatness of thy fortune; or what is better, the greatness of thy soul, in the meekness of thy conversation; condescend to men of low estate, support the distressed, and patronize the neglected. Be great.
Laurence Sterne
#15. I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.
Laurence Sterne
#16. Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.
Laurence Sterne
#17. Artists were always referred to as great artists. I thought that's what the profession was. One word: great-artist. There wasn't one moment in my life when I thought I wanted to be anything else.
Hedda Sterne
#18. 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
#19. I know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all, - who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which concerns you.
Laurence Sterne
#20. Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
Laurence Sterne
#21. Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and Grenadiers?
Laurence Sterne
#22. It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
Laurence Sterne
#23. Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
Laurence Sterne
#24. 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
#25. I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.
Laurence Sterne
#26. We may imitate the Deity in all His attributes; but mercy is the only one in which we can pretend to equal Him. We cannot, indeed, give like God; but surely we may forgive like Him.
Laurence Sterne
#27. What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything.
Laurence Sterne
#28. Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
Laurence Sterne
#29. We get forwards in the world not so much by doing services, as receiving them: you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it.
Laurence Sterne
#31. People don't want the raw data, but instead want marketers to decipher the tech speak for them and present the valuable insights.
Jim Sterne
#33. So fruitful is slander in variety of expedients to satiate as well as disguise itself. But if these smoother weapons cut so sore, what shall we say of open and unblushing scandal, subjected to no caution, tied down to no restraints?
Laurence Sterne
#34. 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.
Laurence Sterne
#35. A true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. His own ideas are only call'd forth by what he reads, and the vibrations within, so entirely correspond with those excited, 'tis like reading himself and not the book.
Laurence Sterne
#36. If time, like money, could be laid by while one was not using it, there might be some excuse for the idleness of half of the world, but yet not a full one. For even this would be such an economy as the living on a principal sum, without making it purchase interest.
Laurence Sterne
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them
Laurence Sterne
#40. But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it.
Laurence Sterne
#42. 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
#43. The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,
through much tribulation.
Laurence Sterne
#44. The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance.
Laurence Sterne
#45. Probably Providence has implanted peevishness and ill-temper in sick and old persons, in compassion to the friends or relations who are to survive; as it must naturally lessen the concern they might otherwise feel for their loss.
Laurence Sterne
#46. 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
#47. The proper education of poor children [is] the ground-work of almost every other kind of charity ... Without this foundation firstlaid, how much kindnessis unavoidably cast away?
Laurence Sterne
#48. 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
#50. Solomon'sexcess became an insult upon the privileges of mankind; for by the same plan of luxury, which made it necessary to have forty thousand stalls of horses,
he had unfortunately miscalculated his other wants, and so had seven hundred wives ...
Wise
deluded man!
Laurence Sterne
#51. We all cry out that the world is corrupt,
and I fear too justly,
but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.
Laurence Sterne
#52. 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
#53. ... so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,
pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
Laurence Sterne
#55. There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture.
Laurence Sterne
#56. Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
Laurence Sterne
#57. Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
Laurence Sterne
#58. Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
Laurence Sterne
#59. 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
#62. A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time.
Laurence Sterne
#63. What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!
Laurence Sterne
#64. One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
Laurence Sterne
#65. There is not a greater paradox in nature,
than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.
Laurence Sterne
#66. 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
#67. Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it, as a sure maxim: "That women are timid:" And 'tis well they are
else there would beno dealing with them.
Laurence Sterne
#68. I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us
but I seldom resist him at all; from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat
soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.
Laurence Sterne
#69. In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.
Laurence Sterne
#70. Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket?
Laurence Sterne
#71. Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
Laurence Sterne
#72. 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
#73. Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them, - imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.
Laurence Sterne
#74. There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers
in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.
Laurence Sterne
#75. Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
Laurence Sterne
#78. Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late.
Laurence Sterne
#79. - I won't go about to argue the point with you, - 'tis so, - and I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, That both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
Laurence Sterne
#80. What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life, - or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.
Laurence Sterne
#81. Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.
Laurence Sterne
#82. [I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.
Laurence Sterne
#83. 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
#84. The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel as he wrote it down dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.
Laurence Sterne
#85. How frequently is the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped With the imputation of proceeding from bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!
Laurence Sterne
#86. 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
#87. The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
Laurence Sterne
#88. Titles of honor are like the impressions on coins, which add no value to gold or silver, but only render brass current.
Laurence Sterne
#91. When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
Laurence Sterne
#92. The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture.
Laurence Sterne
#93. Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners
Laurence Sterne
#94. 'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, and of obstinacy in a bad one.
Laurence Sterne
#95. I have a feeling that in art the need to understand and the need to communicate are one.
Hedda Sterne
#96. Dear sensibility! Source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! Eternal fountain of our feelings! 'tis here I trace thee and this is thy divinity which stirs within me ... All comes from thee, great-great SENSORIUM of the world!
Laurence Sterne
#97. People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
Laurence Sterne
#98. Only the brave know how to forgive ... a coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
Laurence Sterne
#99. A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
Laurence Sterne
#100. An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
Laurence Sterne
