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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.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone
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The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone -
It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone -
There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.
William Shenstone -
Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone -
There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone -
Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
William Shenstone -
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
William Shenstone
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
William Shenstone -
A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone -
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone -
A fool and his words are soon parted.
William Shenstone -
In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
William Shenstone -
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.
William Shenstone