Go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? — This world sur — Laurence Sterne

"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?"

"As for the clergy — No — If I say a word against them, Ill be shot. — I have no desire, — and besides, if I had, — I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, — with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, — and therefore, tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, — and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment."

"Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him, — and, withall, he had so shrewd guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent, — that NATURE might have stood up and said, — "This man is eloquent."

"That grave people hate love for the name’s sake;—That selfish people hate it for their own;—Hypocrites for heaven’s;—"

"Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them."

"It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, — not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air — but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad."