Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by William Shenstone

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

A fool and his words are soon parted.

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.

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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.

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

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.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

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

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

What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

Nothing is sure in London, except expense.

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

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

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.

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

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

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.

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.

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

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

Love is a pleasing but a various clime.

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

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.

Love can be founded upon Nature only.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.

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.

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

To one who said, "I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world," another replied, "It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself."

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.

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

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.

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.

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

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

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

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.