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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.
William Shenstone -
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
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Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.
William Shenstone -
Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
William Shenstone -
Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.
William Shenstone -
Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.
William Shenstone -
Love can be founded upon Nature only.
William Shenstone -
It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?
William Shenstone