Up: Reservations about writing

Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

The danger of learned opinion [as obtained by reading]:

Volume I, Chapter XIX: "I mention this, not only as a matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my father's many odd opinions, --but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception [by means of reading books (editor)] of such guests, who, after a free and undisturbed enterance, for some years, into our brains, - at length claim a kind of settlement there, -working sometimes like yeast; - but more generally after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest, - but ending in downright ernest"

"Ernest" is defined by Sterne in Volume I, Chapter XI, following Francois de la Rochefoucault as "A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind".