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SHANDY_TOWN_MIND

Quotations from "Tristram Shandy"                   
by  Laurence Sterne (1760):                 


   ...he had a thousand little skeptical notions of the 
   comic kind to to defend--most of which notions, I    
   verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of 
   mere whims, and of a vive la Bagatelle; and as
   such he would make merry with them for half an hour  
   or so, and having sharpened his wit upon 'em, dismiss
   them till another day.                               
                                                        
   I mention this... as a warning to the learned reader 
   against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who,
   after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some      
   years, into our brains,--at length claim a kind of   
   settlement there,--working sometimes like yeast;--but
   more generally after the matter of the gentle        
   passion, beginning in jest,--but ending in downright 
   earnest.                                             
                                                        
            Laurence Sterne, "Tristram Shandy" (1760)                   
            p.41, Chapter: 19


   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.  This is of    
   great use.                                               

            Laurence Sterne, "Tristram Shandy" (1760) 
            p.117, Chapter: 19, Book 2


Quoting from Tolstoy's 
"War and Peace" (1865-1869):        
                                                         WAR_AND_PEACE


     We know that man has the faculty of becoming
     completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it
     may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that
     it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's
     entire attention is devoted to it.

          First Epiloque, Chapter X, p. 455 (WC, text here GP)






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