state-apoplexy

Updated: July 24, 2025

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by French politicks or French invasions; nor was he so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined; but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy; and then he would say, The Lord have mercy upon us all.

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