The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Quotes

“Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on’t;”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“my father’s disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“He pick’d up an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.—It becomes his own—and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever existed be whisk’d into at once, did he read such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change sides!”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in England—but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;——he talked however about it every day”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up——and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“As for the Clergy———No——if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“my father and my uncle Toby’s discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY——was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my father’s humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the Ontologic Treasury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to restore to it again.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst——the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly——at least by twenty knots.——Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be!”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“I'll hurt not thee, says my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going a-cross the room, with the fly in his hand,—I'll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,—Dr. Slop would never have given them up;—and my uncle Toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it. When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.—This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.—‘Good God!’ cried my uncle Toby, ‘are children brought into the world with a squirt?”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“Secondly, When a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular instance,—That such a thing goes against his conscience,—always believe he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes against his stomach;—a present want of appetite being generally the true cause of both. ‘In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a Conscience in every thing.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;—so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“What could Dr. Slop do?—he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.—No matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,—and in attempting to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,—in losing which he lost his seat;—and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that without waiting for Obadiah’s onset, he left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“The desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature;—the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it:”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“—This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“For I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that i can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in scating against the wind in Flanders; I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though i will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil; yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about they neck, are flying over our heads light like clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou art twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make. --
-- Heaven have mercy on us both!”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“Si un historiógrafo pudiera conducir su historia como un mulero conduce a su mula,—en línea recta y siempre hacia adelante:— por ejemplo, desde Roma hasta Loreto sin volver la cabeza ni una sola vez en todo el trayecto, ni a derecha ni a izquierda,— podría aventurarse a predecirles a ustedes, con un margen de error de una hora, cuándo iba a llegar al término de su viaje;—pero eso, moralmente hablando, es imposible. Porque si es un hombre con un mínimo de espíritu, se encontrará en la obligación, durante su marcha, de desviarse cincuenta veces de la línea recta para unirse a este o a aquel grupo, y de ninguna manera lo podrá evitar. Se le ofrecerán vistas y perspectivas que perpetuamente reclamarán su atención; y le será tan imposible no detenerse a mirarlas como volar; tendrá, además, diversos:
Relatos que compaginar:
Anécdotas que recopilar:
Inscripciones que descifrar:
Historias que trenzar:
Tradiciones que investigar:
Personajes que visitar.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz. A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind;—which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“A man cannot dress but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time, and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination.”
― Tristram Shandy, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

“But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. 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, through which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled.”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #26]

“Every man speaks of the fair as his own market has gone in it.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“Every man speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it.”
― Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy