Laurence Sterne

Friendship is the balm and cordial of life, and without it, ’tis a heavy load not worth sustaining.

We must bring three parts in four of the treat along with us — In short we must be happy within — and then few things without us make much difference — This is my Shandean philosophy.

I shall not die but live — in the mean time dear F. let us live as merrily but as innocently as we can. — It has ever been as good, if not better, than a bishoprick to me — and I desire no other.

an hard heart is always a cowardly heart

But this is his way; it is the language of his character; and, though one might wish it to be otherwise, yet I cannot tell what right any of us have to pass a severe sentence upon it, for no other reason in the world, but because our own …

Every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of life.

[T]he worst of human maladies is poverty — though that is a second lye — for poverty of spirit is worse than poverty of purse, by ten thousand per cent.

Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw—and ’tis thou who lift’st him up to Heaven!—Eternal Fountain of our feelings!

God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me to the contrary.

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.

The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them;—they are not so pleasant to feel,—but in return the legend is so visible, …

Un homme qui rit, said the duke, ne sera jamais dangereux.

Sweet pliability of man’s spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments!

’Tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other,—and the world, better than we do.

Man is false to himself and betrays his own succours ten times where nature does it once.

Hail, ye small, sweet courtesies of life! for smooth do ye make the road of it.

I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national characters more in these nonsensical minutiæ than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and stalk so much alike, that I would not give …

The heart, in spite of the understanding, will always say too much.

There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which Nature holds out to us: so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.

Tant pis and tant mieux, being two of the great hinges in French conversation, a stranger would do well to set himself right in the use of them before he gets to Paris.

A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!

A man my good Sir, has seldom an offer of kindness to make to a woman, but she has a presentiment of it some moments before.