William Shenstone Quotations

A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

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

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

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.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

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

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

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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.

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

A fool and his words are soon parted.

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.

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

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

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

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

The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

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.

Of all that gives politeness birth,Of all that claims to please,In motion, manners, or in mirth,The surest source is ease.

Of all that gives politeness birth, Of all that claims to please, In motion, manners, or in mirth, The surest source is ease.

I have found out a gift for my fair;I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.

I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.

For seldom shall she hear a taleSo sad, so tender, and so true.

For seldom shall she hear a tale So sad, so tender, and so true.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it

Thy verses are eternal, O my friend, For he who reads them, reads them to no end

The proper means of increasing the love we bear to our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one

To thee, fair Freedom! I retireFrom flattery, cards, and dice, and din:Nor art thou found in mansions higherThan the low cot, or humble inn.

Sloth views the towers of Fame with envious eyes,Desirous still, still impotent to rise.

Sloth views the towers of Fame with envious eyes, Desirous still, still impotent to rise.

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,Emblems right meet of decency does yield.

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow, Emblems right meet of decency does yield.

Nothing is sure in London, except expense.

Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.

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

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.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

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

A court of heraldry sprung up to supply the place of crusade exploits, to grant imaginary shields and trophies to families that never wore real armor, and it is but of late that it has been discovered to have no real jurisdiction.

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 making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.

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.

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.

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

Love is a pleasing but a various clime.

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

However, I think a plain space near the eye gives it a kind of liberty it loves; and then the picture, whether you choose the grand or beautiful, should be held up at its proper distance. Variety is the principal ingredient in beauty; and simplicity is essential to grandeur.

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.

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

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

Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.

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

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.

In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts; the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem.

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.

Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.

Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.

Written on a Window of an Inn,

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

It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?

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.

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.

People can commend the weather without envy.

Patience is the panacea; but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?

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

Nothing is certain in London but expense.

Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.

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

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire From flattery, cards, and dice, and din: Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest; yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover.

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.

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

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.

Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best indivious and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy.

Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.

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.

Those who are incapable of shining out by dress would do well to consider that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out much to their disadvantage.

Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.

I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.

A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.

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

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

There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.

Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.

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.

A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.

Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.