Laurence Sterne Quotes

I think through living one's life, one both changes and remains the same. One can see it either way, one can see oneself as being now what one was and one can see oneself as being absolutely different from what one was. It's a trick of thought.

We are not always even what we are most.

MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.

Everybody's a bit screwed up, you know. You can take it as symptoms of a disorder, or you can take it as personality. Me, I'd rather think it as parts of personality.

I think there are always different times in your life when you go, "Oh, god. I wish I were traditionally pretty. My life would be so much easier." But then you get through that, and you go, "Well, I'm not."

She was startled. "But you're human, aren't you?" In some ways yes. But in other ways I'm a stranger to your kind. I have a friend who calls you plucked angels, and he claims you're a total waste of spirit. Do you ever think like that?" Of course, in honest moments. But I can be just as honest and think that we aren't a spiritual waste but a spiritual potential waiting to grow.

My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.

I think people have the capacity to be many different things and many seemingly contradictory behaviors.

Sometimes, I think we're afraid to admit we want certain things. Especially things that contradict the image we have of ourselves.

The passions we cannot control are the ones that define us.

I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.

We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.

I think that there are just people who are hurting other people, sometimes for the best of intentions and sometimes for the worst. In different times in my life, I've been the hero and I've been the villain. I also think that we're all evil sometimes.

I think as a person, I have a whole bunch of different sides to me.

I think that I get to represent different types of beauty that [are] not just my own.

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

We may prefer to think of ourselves as fallen angels, but in reality we are rising apes.

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

I've played people that are on the line of evil and good, but that's life. We are always playing with the good and the bad. I see them as people. I don't see them as caricatures. I try to not make them caricatures. Maybe I fail, but I try to see what' behind them. Would I play the hero? A superhero? I don't think so. But, I play good guys. There are some there, but you have to look.

It's interesting to feel the pressure of having to be outgoing, because I think in general, as a human being, I'm pessimistic and introverted. But, it's cool, because it's a whole different side of me, and I impress myself. Even at times when I think that there's no possible way that I can be engaging, I'll suddenly pull it out and impress myself.

It is a fine line, in all of us, between civilization and savagery. To any who think they would never cross it, I can only say, if you have never known what it is to be utterly betrayed and abandoned, you cannot know how close it is.

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.

I think humans are driven by othering people, by defining themselves by who they are not and who is different from them. Human beings are in love with othering.