William Shenstone Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

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

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
The charm dissolves; th' aerial music's past;
The banquet ceases, and the vision flies.

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

William Shenstone
There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.

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

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

William Shenstone
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.

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

William Shenstone
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.

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

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
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.

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
The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.

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

William Shenstone
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.

William Shenstone
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.

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

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
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.

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

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

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

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

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

William Shenstone