Unhappily, Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely related to Sterne the writer: his squirrel-soul leaped restlessly from branch to branch; he was familiar with everything from the sublime to the rascally; he had sat everywhere, and always with the same shamelessly watering eyes and play of sensibility on his features. If language does not start back at such a juxtaposition, he possessed a hard-hearted good-naturedness; and in the enjoyment of a baroque, indeed depraved imagination he almost exhibited the bashful charm of innocence. Such an ambiguousness become flesh and soul, such a free-spiritedness in every fibre and muscle of the body, have as he possessed these qualities perhaps been possessed by no other man.

—Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human