Date: 1760-7

"Angels and Ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within side."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,--or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my father's many odd opinions,--but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a free and undisturbed enterance, for some years, into our brai...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"And, thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of elect...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The more my uncle Toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it;--by the same process and electrical assimilation, as I told you, thro' which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu'd,--...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing whi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)