The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 23
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name
for conversation.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 11
‘I’ll not hurt thee,’ says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with
the fly in his hand,—’I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go,’ says he, lifting up the sash, and
opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—’go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt
thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.’
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 12
Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,—always suspect that it is not his reason, but his
passions which have got the better of his creed.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 17
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every
thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally
grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 19
‘Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,’ cried my uncle Toby,—’but nothing to this.’
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 11
The corregiescity of Corregio.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 12.
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,—though the cant of hypocrites may be
the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 12
Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and Grenadiers?
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 4, ch. 5
True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those
affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run
freely through its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 4, ch. 32
‘There is no terror, brother Toby, in its [death’s] looks, but what it borrows from groans and
convulsions—and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of
curtains, in a dying man’s room—Strip it of these, what is it?’—’’Tis better in battle than in bed’,
said my uncle Toby.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 5, ch. 3
There is a North-west passage to the intellectual World.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 5, ch. 42
‘The poor soul will die:—’ ‘He shall not die, by G—’, cried my uncle Toby.—The Accusing
Spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in;—and the
Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.
‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 6, ch. 8