Laurence Sterne

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.

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

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

Now or never was the time.

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

Philosophy has a fine saying for everything - for Death it has an entire set.

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

Pain and pleasure like light and darkness succeed each other.

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

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

Only the brave know how to forgive. ... A coward never forgave it is not in his nature.

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.

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.

Great wits jump

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,__magine that we have had the wit to invent them too.

Cursed luck! __aid he, biting his lip as he shut the door, __or man to be master of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature, __nd have a wife at the same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within side of it, to save his soul from destruction.

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

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.