Sharp Transitions

     "Pray, but work; suffer, but hope; keeping both the earth and the stars in view. Do not try to settle permanently, for it is a place of pilgrimage; not a home, but a halting-place. Seek the truth, for it is to be found, but only in one place, with the One who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
[The last sentence of Strindberg's last major work (written when he was 60 years old); it eulogizes Christianity and evinces his chagrin at his earlier atheistic apostasy.]
— August Strindberg, Zones of the Spirit, p. 286, Arthur Babilotte (ed.), a translation of Strindberg's A Blue Book.

Silence does not always mark wisdom. I was at dinner, some time ago, in company with a man who listened to me and said nothing for a long time; but he nodded his head, and I thought him intelligent. At length, towards the end of the dinner, some apple dumplings were placed on the table, and my man had no sooner seen them than he burst forth with — "Them's the jockies for me!"
[An anecdote of Coleridge's which the editor rejected as being by, but not directly about, a literary man.]
— In The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, James Sutherland (ed.), Introduction, p. vi.

....but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at anything. And in this, Sir, I am so nice and singular a humour that if I thought you was [sic] able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself of what was to come in the next page, — I would tear it out of my book.
— Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, p. 68.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, — the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
     I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands, — be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.
— Laurence Sterne, Ibid., Volume 3, Ch. XII, p. 147.

     [Here appears a graphic of a hand with a pointing finger] A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, — take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one — And so much for tearing out of chapters.
[Occurs after he says he has removed a chapter because it was too good and would show up the rest of his work.]
— Laurence Sterne, Ibid., Volume 4, Ch. XXV, p. 257.

     — That provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so exalted and godlike a Being as man — I am far from denying — but philosophy speaks freely of everything; and therefore I still think and do maintain it to be a pity that it should be done by means of a passion which bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, contemplations, and operations of the soul backwards — a passion, my dear, continued my father [Walter Shandy], addressing himself to my mother, which couples and equals wise men with fools, and makes us come out of caverns and hiding places more like satyrs and four-footed beasts than men.
     I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the Prolepsis), that in itself, and simply taken — like hunger, or thirst, or sleep — 'tis an affair neither good or bad — or shameful or otherwise. — Why then did the delicacy of Diogenes and Plato so recalcitrate against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it that all the parts thereof — the congredients — the preparations — the instruments, and whatever serves thereto, are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language, translation, or periphrasis whatever?
     — The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising his voice — and turning to my uncle Toby — you see, is glorious — and the weapons by which we do it are honourable — We march with them upon our shoulders — We strut with them by our sides — We gild them — Nay, if it be but a scoundrel cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breech of it. —
    — My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better epithet — and Yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to pieces — ....
— Laurence Sterne, Ibid., Volume 9, Ch. XXXIII, p. 524.