A Sentimental Journey

by

Laurence Sterne

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Themes and Colors
Sentimentality Theme Icon
Travel Theme Icon
Sexuality and Kindness Theme Icon
National vs. Personal Identity Theme Icon
Religion Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Sentimental Journey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Travel Theme Icon

In A Sentimental Journey, several characters argue that travel—specifically, encounters with foreigners—can improve people morally by helping them to meet, understand, and love those different from themselves. The book’s narrator, the Englishman Yorick, improves this way during his travels in France. Yorick begins his travels in France by behaving rudely to someone unlike himself. When a Franciscan monk begs Yorick for alms, Yorick not only refuses to give him anything but criticizes his religious order’s voluntary poverty. Yorick also betrays his prejudice against other nationalities, claiming that if he were going to give money to anyone, he would give it to other poor Englishmen first. Because the Franciscan monk responds with humility and resignation rather than anger, Yorick immediately regrets his rudeness. He later apologizes to the monk, and the two men exchange snuff-boxes as a gesture of friendship. At subsequent points in the novel, the monk’s snuff-box reminds Yorick of the cosmopolitan virtues to which he aspires. Thus, A Sentimental Journey suggests that Yorick’s encounter with a foreign monk really has improved him.

Yet not all the characters Yorick meets improve this way after meeting foreigners, which suggests that the result of such an encounter depends on the attitude a person brings to it. When Yorick is making the rounds of Parisian society, the people he meets only want him to reinforce their own identities and views: the Marquis de B**** just wants Yorick to suggest the Marquis is still a womanizer, Madame de Q*** just wants Yorick to listen to and approve of her wit, and so on. None of them care what they could learn from the foreigner, Yorick, in their midst. A Sentimental Journey thus illustrates that encounters with foreigners, which travel provides, can improve people morally—but only if they are open to change and new experiences. 

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Travel ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Travel appears in each volume of A Sentimental Journey. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
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A Sentimental Journey PDF

Travel Quotes in A Sentimental Journey

Below you will find the important quotes in A Sentimental Journey related to the theme of Travel.
Volume 1 Quotes

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompress’d, looks round him, as if he sought for an object to share it with[.]

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), Franciscan Monk (Father Lorenzo)
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

I have behaved very ill; said I within myself; but I have only just set out upon my travels, and shall learn better manners as I get along.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), Franciscan Monk (Father Lorenzo)
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

I guard this box, as I would the instrumental parts of my religion, to help my mind on to something better: in truth, I seldom go abroad without it; and oft and many a time have I called up by it the courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my own, in the justlings of the world[.]

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), Madame de L—, Franciscan Monk (Father Lorenzo)
Related Symbols: Snuff-box
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ‘Tis all barren—and so it is, and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare, said I, clapping my hands chearily together, that was I in a desart, I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections[.]

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker)
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur’s eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another: whilst this interregnum lasts, I always perceive my heart locked up—I can scarce find in it, to give Misery a sixpence, and therefore I always get out of it as fast as I can, and the moment I am rekindled, I am all generosity and good will again; and would do any thing in the world either for, or with any one, if they will but satisfy me there is no sin in it.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), La Fleur, Madame de L—, Franciscan Monk (Father Lorenzo)
Related Symbols: Snuff-box
Page Number: 33-34
Explanation and Analysis:

I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national character more in these nonsensical minutiae, than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and stalk so much alike, that I would not give nine-pence to chuse amongst them.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker)
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:

Surely—surely man! it is not good for thee to sit alone—thou wast made for social intercourse and gentle greetings, and this improvement of our natures from it, I appeal to, as my evidence.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), Grisset
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:

[T]here is a balance, said he, of good and bad every where; and nothing but the knowing it is so can emancipate one half of the world from the prepossessions which it holds against the other—that the advantage of travel, as it regarded sçavoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow, taught us mutual love.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker), Old French Soldier (speaker)
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2 Quotes

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker)
Related Symbols: Starling
Page Number: 69-70
Explanation and Analysis:

I think there is a fatality in it—I seldom go to the place I set out for.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker)
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance—but as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have look’d upon it now, as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said, that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a chearful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay—

—Or a learned prelate either, said I.

Related Characters: Yorick (The Narrator) (speaker)
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis: