William Shenstone Quotes
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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.
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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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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.
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The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
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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.
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Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.
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A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
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I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.
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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.
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Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.
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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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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.
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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
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There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest; yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover.
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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.
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The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
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It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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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.
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We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.
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Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
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Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives those who labor under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
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A fool and his words are soon parted.