I could wish to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own by. It is for this reason that I have not seen the Calais Royal - nor the facade of the Louvre - nor have attempted to swell the catalogs we have of pictures, statues, and churches - I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself.

— Laurence Sterne

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;--and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,--then certs the soul does not inhabit there.

— Laurence Sterne

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

— Laurence Sterne

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

— Laurence Sterne

I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.

— Laurence Sterne

It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with someone....

— Laurence Sterne

—I won't go about to argue the point with you, —'tis so, —and I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, "That both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.

— Laurence Sterne

Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.

— Laurence Sterne

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.

— Laurence Sterne

Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them, —imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.

— Laurence Sterne