The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

As many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever in different airs and attitudes, -- not one, or all of them, can ever help the reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak, or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.

-- There was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, by which handle he would take a thing, -- it baffled, Sir, all calculations.