Best 103 quotes of William Shenstone on MyQuotes

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 fool and his words are soon parted.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.