Date: 1760-7

"He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natu...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Now these two knobs--or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature,--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful,-- the most priz'd,--the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge,-- my uncle Toby, --the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain,--took it instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d' H...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on't, and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make his passions go of...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The courteous stranger's nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night thro' for it"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But for sleep--I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin--I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy l...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex---that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain,--the soul of Phutatorius, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deli...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)