Quotes from Laurence Sterne

Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.

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.

Endless is the search of truth.

When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!

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.

Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world - though the cant of hypocrites ihay be the worst - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, tho' the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.

We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them

Every time a man smiles, and much more when he laughs, it adds something to his fragment of life.

A man cannot dress, without his ideas get clothed at the same time.

Now or never was the time.

This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

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.

Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.

The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.

The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,--where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not.

Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.

Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.

When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.

A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.

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!