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

"Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising-ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on,--let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it,...

— 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

"My uncle Toby would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoaking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and Scroderus's solutions into it."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But the word siege, like a talismanic power,' in my father's metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby's fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch,--he open'd his ears,--and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to pr...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby's fancy, during the time of my father's explanation of Prignitz to him,--having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;--his body might as well have taken a turn there too,--so that with...

— 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

"Figuratively speaking, dear Toby, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can't prevent the shock--at least it imposes upon our s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)