The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimulates 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.

Quoted on July 18, 2025

—I mean, answer'd Dr. Slop, he would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments. Pray how many have you in all, said my uncle Toby, for I always forget? - Seven, answered Dr. Slop. Humph! — said my uncle Toby; tho' not accented as a note of acquiescence, —but as an interjection of that particular species of surprize, when a man, in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than he expected.

Quoted on July 16, 2025

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.

For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.

Quoted on July 14, 2025

[The people of Denmark are equal. But here in England....]
With us, you see, the case is quite different; — we are all ups and downs in this matter;— you are a great genius;- - or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;---not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,— no, we are not so irregular as that comes to;— but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

Quoted on July 7, 2025

But I must here, once for all, inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—I detest the thought of such a thing;—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the meaning of the word) by all the 28 world;——which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,—I am determined shall be the case.

Quoted on July 7, 2025

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Quoted on June 27, 2025

By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is disgressive, and it is progressive too--and at the same time.

Quoted on December 1, 2010

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man, --

Quoted on December 1, 2010

. . . -for each one's sorrow's, thou hadst a tear, -for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.

Quoted on May 19, 2010