William Shenstone Quotes
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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.
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The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
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Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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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.
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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
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Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
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In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
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Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.
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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.
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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.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.
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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.
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Love can be founded upon Nature only.
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The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
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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.
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When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived.
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The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
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A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
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Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.