The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

There is nothing shows the character of my father and my uncle Toby, in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment, under the same accident -- -- -for I call not love a misfortune, from a persuasion, that a man's heart is ever the better for it -- -- -Great God! what must my uncle Toby's have been, when 'twas all benignity without it.

My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this passion, before he married -- -- -but from a little subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit to it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the Devil, and write the bitterest Philippicks against the eye that ever man wrote -- -- -there is one in verse upon somebody's eye or other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus: