«What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?—from sorrow to sorrow?—to button up one cause of vexation!—and unbutton another!» (Tristram Shandy, Volume IV, Chapter XXXI) ~ #BornOnThisDay: #LaurenceSterne (1713-1768), Anglo-Irish novelist, satirist and Anglican clergyman best known for his novels, Tristram Shandy, and A Sentimental Journey; but he also published sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Tristam Shandy is famous for its unusual narrative style, as Shandy is famously and comically known for his inability to tell his story, with endless digressions. The novel, in which Sterne manipulated narrative time and voice, played with the narrative form accepted up to his age, and included a great deal of parody and bawdy humor, became famous not only in the Great Britain, but throughout Europe almost upon its publication. Sterne influenced European writers as diverse as Voltaire, Diderot, Goethe and the German Romanticists. ~ Best-known works: • The Life and Opinions of #TristramShandy, Gentleman (1759-67, novel) • A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768, novel) ~ «... I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours—which, o' my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest.» (Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. V) ~ «The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.» (Tristram Shandy, Vol. II, Ch. III) ~ «It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one.» (A Sentimental Journey) ~ #birthday #Sterne #ASentimentalJourney #TheLifeAndOpinionsOfTristramShandyGentleman #ASentimentalJourneyThroughFranceAndItaly #ASentimentalJourneyAndOtherWritings #APoliticalRomance #JournalToEliza #book #books #bookstagram #novel #englishnovel #reading #read #literature #bibliophile #bookworm #booknerd #bookish #classics https://www.instagram.com/p/CH-G_3xg11C/?igshid=13dn50pyjr72b
