Date: 1760-7

The "small channels" of wit and judgment may "seem quite dried up,--then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury,--you would think they would never stop."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment are two luminaries and "their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgement are, like "two knobbs" on the back of a chair, "the highest and most ornamental parts of" and "both made and fitted to go together, in order as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments,--to answer one another."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But here the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;--is conscious of the web she has wove;--knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has plann'd before her."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The "conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures it may) insensibly become hard;--and, like some tender parts of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose, by degrees, that nice sense and perception with which God and nature endow'd it"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Whenever one's "inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused,--that he must necessarily be a guilty man."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Self-love may "hang the least bias upon the judgment."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The "little interests below" may "rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Could no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred Court [of Conscience]:--Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;--or was asham'd to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Or, lastly, were we assured, that Interest stood always unconcern'd whilst the cause was hearing,--and that passion never got into the judgment-seat, and pronounc'd sentence in the stead of reason, which is supposed always to preside and determine upon the case."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)