William Shenstone Quotes
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The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
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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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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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There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.
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A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.
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Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
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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.
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Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
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My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
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Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
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The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
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The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
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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.
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Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
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A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
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Those who are incapable of shining out by dress would do well to consider that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out much to their disadvantage.
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
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I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.
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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."
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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.