Laurence Sterne
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.Collection: Sight
Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.Collection: Writing
O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Time
A coward never forgives.Collection: Forgiveness
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.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Silly
Beauty has so many charms, one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportion raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it,--and something to the embellishments which set it off; and yet, when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.Collection: Beauty
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.Collection: Art
Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.Collection: Travel
I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.Collection: Writing
To saya man is fallen in love,or that he is deeply in love,or up to the ears in love,and sometimes even over head and ears in it,carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,I hold to be damnable and heretical:and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will,my uncleToby fell into it.Collection: Plato
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.Collection: Reading
Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.Collection: Reading
'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.Collection: Perseverance
Chance is the providence of adventurers.Collection: Inspirational
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Happiness
A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.Collection: Kings
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.Collection: Father
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.Collection: Hurt
It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: Heaven
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.Collection: Education
For I begin with writing the first sentence, — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.Collection: Writing
Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.Collection: Men
Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a death-bed repentance is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all on.Collection: Death
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.Collection: Atheist
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.Collection: Death
I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.Collection: Moon
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, — who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, — and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes — each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs — quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Men
Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Encouragement
The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.Collection: Adversity
What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.Collection: Adventure
Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.Collection: Want
So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse 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?Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Men
There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.Collection: Sweet
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.Collection: Learning
The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.Collection: Heaven
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?Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: Men
The great end of all religionis to purify our hearts--and conquer our passions--and in a word, to make us wiser and better men--better neighbours--better citizens--and better servants of GOD.Collection: Passion
The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.Collection: Tickets
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.Collection: Men
When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.Collection: Names