Laurence Sterne (1713–68) was an Irish-born British novelist and Anglican clergyman. Even though he produced only two works of fiction, he ranks as one of the foremost novelists of the 18th century on account of his experiments with the structure and organization of the novel.
Born in Clonmel in County Tipperary, Ireland, Sterne got educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he absorbed John Locke’s philosophy. Sterne subsequently worked as a clergyman in the north of England.
Sterne achieved instant notoriety and acclaim following the publication of the first two volumes of his nine-volume masterwork The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67.) Heralding the development of modernism, this novel radically challenged the conventions of the novel form and provoked much applause and abuse for its sentimentality and its salaciousness.
Tristram Shandy narrates the birth of its protagonist in volume four, near the novel’s midpoint. Sterne typifies that life is not necessarily best represented in a linear progression of dramatic incidents rounded off to a delightful moral analysis. Life is rather fragmentary and ever-changing and consists of a web of associations and influences drawing attention to the past and the future.
Sterne’s health-related sojourn in France provided material for his Sentimental Journey (1767,) which he completed before his death of tuberculosis. Sterne also wrote many sermons, memoirs, and was involved in local politics.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Laurence Sterne
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Science
The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.
—Laurence Sterne
Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Conscience
Nothing in this life, after health and virtue, is more estimable than knowledge,—nor is there anything so easily attained, or so cheaply purchased,—the labor, only sitting still, and the expense but time, which, if we do not spend, we cannot save.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Knowledge
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.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Parenting, Parents
I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation?. He replied, that Providence was his next door neighbor.
—Laurence Sterne
Before an affliction is digested, consolation comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late; but there is a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at.
—Laurence Sterne
The way to fame is like the way to heaven, through much tribulation.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Fame
Only the brave know how to forgive… A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Forgiveness
I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than that of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality.
—Laurence Sterne
It shocks me to think how much mischief almost every man may do, who will but resolve to do all he can.
—Laurence Sterne
Madness is consistent, which is more than can be said of poor reason.—Whatever may be the ruling passion at the time continues so throughout the whole delirium, though it should last for life.—Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy, but begin to shift and waver as we return to reason.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Reason, Madness
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst for riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Knowledge, Virtues
Precedents are the band and disgrace of legislation.—They are not wanted to justify right measures, and are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing-masters, and gentlemen ushers.
—Laurence Sterne
Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Teachers, Teaching
A great deal of virtue, at least the outward appearance of it, is not so much from any fixed principle, as the terror of what the world will say, and the liberty it will take upon the occasions we shall give.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Virtue
Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility and virtue,—that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman’s life both glorious and happy.
—Laurence Sterne
Every time a man smiles, and much more when he laughs, it adds something to his fragment of life.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Cheerfulness
So long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
—Laurence Sterne
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other; and he only who knows how to accommodate himself to their returns, and can wisely extract the good from the evil, knows how to live.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Pain
There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will; a word—a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force would scarce have reached the object aimed at.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Feelings
Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.
—Laurence Sterne
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Complaining, Complaints, Pessimism
There are some tempers wrought up by habitual selfishness to an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature or had no lot or connection at all with the species.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Selfishness
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Pride
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Slavery
I never drink.—I cannot do it on equal terms with others.—It costs them only one day; but it costs me three; the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.
—Laurence Sterne
‘Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, and of obstinacy in a bad one.
—Laurence Sterne
Topics: Perseverance
How large a portion of chastity is sent out of the world by distant hints,—nodded away and cruelly winked into suspicion, by the envy of those who are past all temptation of it themselves. How often does the reputation of a helpless creature bleed by a report which the party propagating it beholds with pity, and is sorry for it, and hopes it may not be true, but in the meantime gives it her pass, that at least it may have fair play in the world,—to be be lieved or not, according to the charity of those into whose hands it shall happen to fall.
—Laurence Sterne
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
Topics: Criticism, Critics, Hypocrisy, Art
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Richard Chenevix Trench Irish Archbishop, Poet
Jonathan Swift Irish Satirist
Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
Sheridan Le Fanu Irish Novelist
Joyce Cary English Novelist
James Joyce Irish Novelist
Samuel Lover Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) British Anglican Author
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington Irish Novelist
Oliver Goldsmith Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet