Top 180 Laurence Sterne Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.”

— Laurence Sterne

Featured in: Respect Quotes

2. “The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.”

— Laurence Sterne

Featured in: Business Quotes, Learning Quotes, Knowledge Quotes

3. “Now or never was the time.”

— Laurence Sterne

4. “In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.”

— Laurence Sterne

5. “Endless is the search of truth.”

— Laurence Sterne

6. “I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next.”

— Laurence Sterne

7. “La seriedad es un continente misterioso del cuerpo que sirve para ocultar los defectos de la mente.”

— Laurence Sterne

8. “Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other; and he only who knows how to accommodate himself to their returns, and can wisely extract the good from the evil, knows how to live.”

— Laurence Sterne

9. “The sad vicissitude of things.”

— Laurence Sterne

10. “Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.”

— Laurence Sterne

11. “What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything.”

— Laurence Sterne

12. “Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.”

— Laurence Sterne

13. “An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.”

— Laurence Sterne

14. “The best hearts are ever the bravest.”

— Laurence Sterne

15. “I’ll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.”

— Laurence Sterne

16. “Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.”

— Laurence Sterne

17. “I am sick as a horse.”

— Laurence Sterne

18. “It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.”

— Laurence Sterne

19. “To write a book is for all the world like humming a song – be but in tune with yourself, madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it.”

— Laurence Sterne

20. “Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.”

— Laurence Sterne

21. “Only the brave know how to forgive.”

— Laurence Sterne

22. “The way to fame, is like the way to heaven, – through much tribulation.”

— Laurence Sterne

23. “Human nature is the same in all professions.”

— Laurence Sterne

24. “But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it.”

— Laurence Sterne

25. “When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights; and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.”

— Laurence Sterne

26. “It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.”

— Laurence Sterne

27. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

28. “We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.”

— Laurence Sterne

29. “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?”

— Laurence Sterne

30. “If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.”

— Laurence Sterne

31. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

32. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

33. “Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.”

— Laurence Sterne

34. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

35. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

36. “When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion, – or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head- strong, – farewell cool reason and fair discretion.”

— Laurence Sterne

37. “I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”

— Laurence Sterne

38. “There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was “a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion” – I forget where.”

— Laurence Sterne

39. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

40. “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”

— Laurence Sterne

41. “A man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin’s lining; rumple the one, you rumple the other.”

— Laurence Sterne

42. “Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world – though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst – the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”

— Laurence Sterne

43. “Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.”

— Laurence Sterne

44. “An English man does not travel to see English men.”

— Laurence Sterne

45. “That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the bst – I’m sure it is the most religious – for I begin with writing the first sentence – and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”

— Laurence Sterne

46. “The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”

— Laurence Sterne

47. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

48. “Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.”

— Laurence Sterne

49. “Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.”

— Laurence Sterne

50. “A good simile, – as concise as a king’s declaration of love.”

— Laurence Sterne