William Shenstone Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

A little bench of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo.

William Shenstone
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use; or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
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.

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

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

William Shenstone
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.

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

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

William Shenstone
Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

William Shenstone
A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.

William Shenstone
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.

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

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
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.

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

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

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
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.

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

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

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

William Shenstone
Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

William Shenstone