“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.”
“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.”
Source: The Poems of William Shenstone ...
“Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.”
Source: The Poetical Works of William Shenstone: With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes
“Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.”
“Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.”
“Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.”
Source: The Poetical Works of William Shenstone: With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes
“The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“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.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“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."”
“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?”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.”
Source: The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq: Most of which Were Never Before Printed ...
“Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“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.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.”
Source: The Select Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone ... The Third Edition
“Love is a pleasing but a various clime.”
Source: Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone
“Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“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.”
Source: The Select Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone ... The Third Edition
“Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“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.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.”
Source: The works, in verse and prose of William Shenstone, esq. ...
“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.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.”
Source: The Works, in Verse and Prose
“Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.”
Source: The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq;: Essays on men, manners, and things. A description of The Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, Esq. Verses to Mr. Shenstone
“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.”
Source: Men & Manners
“It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“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.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“A court of heraldry sprung up to supply the place of crusade exploits, to grant imaginary shields and trophies to families that never wore real armor, and it is but of late that it has been discovered to have no real jurisdiction.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“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.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.”
Source: The Works, in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq: In Two Volumes. With Decorations
“I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.”
“In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends.”
Source: The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq;: Essays on men, manners, and things. A description of The Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, Esq. Verses to Mr. Shenstone
“Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“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.”
“I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Theirs is the present who can praise the past.”
Source: Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone