William Shenstone Quotes
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Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
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Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
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Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
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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.
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
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It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.
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Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
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The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.
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Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.
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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.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
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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.
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Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
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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.
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Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
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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.