Date: 1760-7

"So that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a day of some body's tackling; and as the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way,—you may likewise imagine, 'twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Trim ran down and brought up his Master's supper,--to no purpose:--Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination,--my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But my father's mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the investigation; running, like the hypercritic's, altogether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door,--measuring their distance,--and keeping his mind so intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of nothing else,...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I would not, brother Toby, continued my father,--I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But so full is your head of these confounded works, that tho' my wife is this moment in the pains of labour,--and you hear her cry out,--yet nothing will serve you but to carry off the man-midwife."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, palisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur, and of all the towns in Flanders with it."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I was but ten years old when this happened;--but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;--or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;--or i...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature equal,--and that the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding, --was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or below another,--but arose merely from the lucky or unl...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophised, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so m...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)