Laurence Sterne

“ There is no terrour, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions—and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room.—Strip it of these, what is it?—'Tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle Toby.—Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids—What is it?—Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby—'tis terrible no way—for consider, brother Toby,—when we are—death is not;—and when death is—we are not. ”

“ For God's sake, my uncle Toby would cry,—and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy,—do let this story of our aunt's and her ashes sleep in peace;—how can you,—how can you have so little feeling and compassion for the character of our family:—What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.—Nay, if you come to that—what is the life of a family:—The life of a family!—my uncle Toby would say, throwing himself back in his armchair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg.—Yes the life,—my father would say, maintaining his point. ”

“ Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by you, in Le Fever's funeral sermon, That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?—But why did you not add, Yorick,—if not by Nature—that he is so by Necessity?—For what is war? what is it, Yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of liberty, and upon principles of honour—what is it, but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? ”

“ To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the duke of Marlborough, in the main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth;—the one with the Gazette in his hand,—the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.—What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! ”

“ With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.
My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it—for he holds the forefinger of his left hand between the forefinger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming———“You grant me this——and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.” ”

“ Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark—our appetites are but diseases) —is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?—not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?
Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh? ”

“ Every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d Tom success; and I can fancy, an’ please your honour, I see him this moment with his white dimity waist-coat and breeches, and hat a little o’ one side, passing jollily along the street, swinging his stick, with a smile and a chearful word for every body he met:——But alas! Tom! thou smilest no more, cried the corporal, looking on one side of him upon the ground, as if he apostrophised him in his dungeon.
Poor fellow! said my uncle Toby, feelingly. ”

“ Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps:—let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse comes across me—drop the curtain, Shandy—I drop it—Strike a line here across the paper, Tristram—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter. ”

“ 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 thy neck, are flying over our heads like light 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 upon us both! ”

“ I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.—But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, Yorick, has not a parent to point it out. ”

“ But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear Eugenius—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle Toby’s amours, and with all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand——
What a work it is likely to turn out! ”

“ Gallant mortal! cried my uncle Toby, caught up with enthusiasm—this 418 moment, now that all is lost, I see him galloping across me, corporal, to the left, to bring up the remains of the English horse along with him to support the right, and tear the laurel from Luxembourg’s brows, if yet ’tis possible——I see him with the knot of his scarfe just shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor Galway’s regiment—riding along the line—then wheeling about, and charging Conti at the head of it——Brave! brave, by heaven! cried my uncle Toby—he deserves a crown——As richly, as a thief a halter ”

“ When I reflect, brother Toby, upon Man; and take a view of that dark side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of trouble—when I consider, brother Toby, how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our inheritance—I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting my father—but my commission. ”

“ Wadman went round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby's groin; and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and pele mele with the Dutch to take the counterguard of St. Roch sword in hand—and then with tender notes playing upon his ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of the trench, wiping her eye, as he was carried to his tent—Heaven! Earth! Sea!—all was lifted up—the springs of nature rose above their levels—an angel of mercy sat besides him on the sopha—his heart glow'd with fire—and had he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. Wadman. ”

“ Does not all the world know, said the curate d'Estella at the conclusion of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts of Europe, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom of Navarre?—The evil indeed spread no farther then—but have not beds and bolsters, and night-caps and chamber-pots stood upon the brink of destruction ever since? Are not trouse, and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots and faucets, in danger still from the same association?—Chastity, by nature, the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head—'tis like a ramping and a roaring lion. ”

“ Knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in infinitum;—that the grains and scruples were as much a part of it, as the gravitation of the whole world.—In a word, he would say, error was error,—no matter where it fell,—whether in a fraction,—or a pound,—'twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by a mistake in the dust of a butterfly's wing,—as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together. ”

“ I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands,—be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.
Great Apollo! if thou art in a giving humour,—give me,—I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it,—and send Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to—no matter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and humours runs high,—where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason,—the height of our wit and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities,—and accordingly, we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain. ”

“ I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of mind, that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.—My nerves relax as I tell it.—Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not.—And this moment that I last dipp'd my pen into my ink, I could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there appear'd in my manner of doing it.—Lord! ”

“ The world is ashamed of being virtuous——My uncle Toby knew little of the world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow Wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a mystery of, than if Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gap’d knife across his finger: Had it been otherwise——yet as he ever look’d upon Trim as a humble friend; and saw fresh reasons every day of his life, to treat him as such——it would have made no variation in the manner in which he informed him of the affair.
“I am in love, corporal!” quoth my uncle Toby. ”

“ So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle Toby as he sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs—O Garrick!—what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and secure my own behind it. ”

“ It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,—as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;—and not only the life of my child, brother,—but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter. ”