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:
“To say a man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in love ... carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:Mthis is ... Plato’s opinion, which ... I hold to be damnable and heretical.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I pity the men whose natural pleasures are burthens, and who fly from joy ... as if it was really an evil in itself.... Poor unfortunate creature that he is! as if the causes of anguish in the heart were not enow—but he must fill up the measure, with those of caprice; and not only walk in a vain shadow,—but disquiet himself in vain too.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us,—the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man’s stature as to his happiness.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Knowledge, like matter, [my father] would affirm, was divisible in infinitum;Mthat 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.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us—but I seldom resist him at all; from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat—so ... instead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)