William Shenstone Quotes

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

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

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.

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

Taste and good-nature are universally connected.

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

Nothing is certain in London but expense.

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.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

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

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.

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.

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.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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

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.

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

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

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

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.

Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.

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.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

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

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.

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

Nothing is sure in London, except expense.

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.

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.

Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

People can commend the weather without envy.

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. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

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

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.

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.

The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.

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