Date: 1768

"My heart smote me the moment he shut the door."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Psha! said I with an air of carelessness, three several times--but it would not do: every ungracious syllable I had utter'd, crouded back into my imagination."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"But there is no nation under heaven abounding with more variety of learning--where the sciences may be more fitly woo'd, or more surely won than here--where art is encouraged, and will so soon rise high--where Nature (take her all together) has so little to answer for--and, to close all, where t...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I'm persuaded, to a man who feels for others as well as for himself, every rainy night, disguise it as you will, must cast a damp upon your spirits."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of three or four louisd'ors, which is the most I can be overreach'd in?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Every dirty passion, and bad propensity in my nature, took the alarm, as I stated the proposition."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"But 'tis a civil thing, said I--and as I generally act from the first impulse, and therefore seldom listen to these cabals, which serve no purpose, that I know of, but to encompass the heart with adamant--I turn'd instantly about to the lady."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I should as soon think of making a genteel suit of cloaths out of remnants:--and to do it--pop--at first sight by declaration--is submitting the offer and themselves with it, to be sifted, with all their pours and contres, by an unheated mind."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"The fire caught--and the whole city, like the heart of one man, open'd itself to Love."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)