Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was the vicar of this parish, but when the parsonage house was destroyed by fire, he moved to nearby Coxwold. While in Sutton he conceived, wrote and published the first two books of Tristram Shandy. It is probable that the book was based on Sutton and the people who lived in and around it, and Sutton on the Forest may be regarded as the true birthplace of the modern novel.
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Famous quotes by laurence sterne:
“I hate set dissertations,—and above all things in the world, ‘tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The duce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this affair—and if I had one ... I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had done—Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it—a pretty story! is a man to follow rules—or rules to follow him?”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“If the heart beguiles itself in its choice [of a wife], and imagination will give excellencies which are not the portion of flesh and blood:Mwhen the dream is over, and we awake in the morning, it matters little whether ‘tis Rachael or Leah,—be the object what it will, as it must be on the earthly side ... of perfection,—it will fall short of the work of fancy, whose existence is in the clouds.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)