Quotes from Laurence Sterne's books, and about them
Tristram Shandy on Don Quixote: “…my purpose is to do exact justice to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,--I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don Quixote's horse;--in all other points, the parson's horse, I say, was just such another, for he was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade,…”
Tristram Shandy on A Tale of a Tub: “…a chapter apart--I say, by Posterity--and care not, if I repeat the word again--for what has this book done more than the Legation of Moses, or the Tale of a Tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of Time along with them?”
Tristram Shandy on The Essays: “prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window”
A Sentimental Journey on Much Ado about Nothing: “'twas better to read Shakespeare; so taking up "_Much Ado About Nothing_," I transported myself instantly from the chair I sat in to Messina in Sicily”
Growth of the Soil on Tristram Shandy: “There is a touch of Sterne about the book; not the exaggerated super-Sterne of Tristram Shandy, with eighteenth-century-futurist blanks and marbled pages, but the fluent, casual, follow-your-fancy Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_.”
Melmoth the Wanderer on Tristram Shandy: “all in vizard masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah's in Tristram Shandy, served to conceal them”