Skip to content

Crowded towns and busy societies may delight the unthinking and the gay, but solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

— Laurence Sterne

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Letter III. To Miss L. (Elizabeth Lumley, who became Sterne's wife in 1741), in Letters (1775)
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Laurence Sterne

Beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.

Sermon XXIV: Pride (1766)

A man who laughs will never be dangerous.

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause — and of obstinacy in a bad one.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)

A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

All Laurence Sterne quotes →

Topics

Alone

More quotes by Laurence Sterne

Only the brave know how to forgive...A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.

Every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of life.

Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

Friendship is the balm and cordial of life, and without it, ’tis a heavy load not worth sustaining.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)

All Laurence Sterne quotes →

You may also like

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

Walter Scott Marmion (1808)

There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.

Sylvester Stallone

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Laurence Sterne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.