Top 180 Laurence Sterne Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “If ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.”

— Laurence Sterne

102. “We are born to trouble; and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.”

— Laurence Sterne

103. “In all unmerciful actions, the worst of men pay this compliment at least to humanity, as to endeavour to wear as much of the appearance of it, as the case will well let them.”

— Laurence Sterne

104. “A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath’d at the same time.”

— Laurence Sterne

105. “When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage – that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.”

— Laurence Sterne

106. “When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.”

— Laurence Sterne

107. “Surely, ’tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.”

— Laurence Sterne

108. “The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel as he wrote it down dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.”

— Laurence Sterne

109. “I never drink. I cannot do it, on equal terms with others. It costs them only one day; but me three, the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.”

— Laurence Sterne

110. “My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.”

— Laurence Sterne

111. “All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.”

— Laurence Sterne

112. “We may imitate the Deity in all His attributes; but mercy is the only one in which we can pretend to equal Him. We cannot, indeed, give like God; but surely we may forgive like Him.”

— Laurence Sterne

113. “Look into the world – how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man’s affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.”

— Laurence Sterne

114. “Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man’s stature as to his happiness.”

— Laurence Sterne

115. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

116. “Je weniger wirkliches Wissen, desto mehr Hitze und Aufregung.”

— Laurence Sterne

117. “The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.”

— Laurence Sterne

118. “It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.”

— Laurence Sterne

119. “There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.”

— Laurence Sterne

120. “The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.”

— Laurence Sterne

121. “A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.”

— Laurence Sterne

122. “I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. – Accordingly I set off thus:.”

— Laurence Sterne

123. “One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.”

— Laurence Sterne

124. “If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.”

— Laurence Sterne

125. “Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story...”

— Laurence Sterne

126. “The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.”

— Laurence Sterne

127. “Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue; – that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman’s life both glorious and happy.”

— Laurence Sterne

128. “Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.”

— Laurence Sterne

129. “When the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in – woe be to truth!”

— Laurence Sterne

130. “Titles of honor are like the impressions on coins, which add no value to gold or silver, but only render brass current.”

— Laurence Sterne

131. “I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume – and no farther than to my first day’s life – ‘tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it – on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back –.”

— Laurence Sterne

132. “People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.”

— Laurence Sterne

133. “Some people pass through life soberly and religiously enough, without knowing way, or reasoning about it, but, from force of habit merely, go to heaven like fools.”

— Laurence Sterne

134. “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.”

— Laurence Sterne

135. “Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket?”

— Laurence Sterne

136. “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?”

— Laurence Sterne

137. “When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.”

— Laurence Sterne

138. “Probably Providence has implanted peevishness and ill-temper in sick and old persons, in compassion to the friends or relations who are to survive; as it must naturally lessen the concern they might otherwise feel for their loss.”

— Laurence Sterne

139. “Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.”

— Laurence Sterne

140. “It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one...”

— Laurence Sterne

141. “There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.”

— Laurence Sterne

142. “There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.”

— Laurence Sterne

143. “People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.”

— Laurence Sterne

144. “The circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape; – and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is – great – little – good – bad – indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.”

— Laurence Sterne

145. “Great wits jump.”

— Laurence Sterne

146. “I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.”

— Laurence Sterne

147. “Great is the power of Eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears.”

— Laurence Sterne

148. “To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.”

— Laurence Sterne

149. “What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!”

— Laurence Sterne

150. “Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.”

— Laurence Sterne