William Shenstone Quotes

It happens a little unluckily that the persons who have the most infinite contempt of money are the same that have the strongest appetite for the pleasures it procures.

Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.

The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.

Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.

People can commend the weather without envy.

The works of a person that begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve. In this, planting promises a more lasting pleasure than building; which, were it to remain in equal perfection, would at best begin to moulder and want repairs in imagination. Now trees have a circumstance that suits our taste, and that is annual variety.

Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.

Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives those who labor under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.

When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.

Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.

Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.

Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance; I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.

Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.

Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.

A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind.

We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.

The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.

There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.

So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.

In every village marked with little spire,
Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.

When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived.

Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.

Taste and good-nature are universally connected.

What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.

It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.

To one who said, "I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world," another replied, "It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself."

A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends.

My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.

Nothing is certain in London but expense.

The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.

The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.

Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.

Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.

A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.

A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love.

Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.

I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.