Laurence Sterne Quotes

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.

Everybody kind of perceives me as being angry. It's not anger, it's motivation.

Anger is a good motivator.

Reason without passion is sterile, but passion without reason is hysteria.

To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning "what to feel" in the various circumstances that prompt them.

Wisdom always waits for the right time to act, while emotion always pushes for action right now!

An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

He is next to the gods whom reason, and not passion, impels; and who, after weighing the facts, can measure the punishment with discretion.

The end never justifies the means because there is no end; there are only means.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

Behavior shapes emotions.

Appropriate action means to advance your own goals, without unintentional harm to anyone else.

When we are caught up in a destructive emotion, we lose one of our greatest assets: our independence.

I've learned to check the hasty words that rise to my lips, and when I feel that they mean to break out against my will, I just go away for a minute, and give myself a little shake for being so weak and wicked.

Take heed lest passion sway Thy judgement to do aught, which else free will Would not admit.

Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result.

I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.

Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions

Pity is an emotion that can get you killed. The only thing more dangerous is blind hate, and maybe love.

The face is not a secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal partner in the emotional process.