William Shenstone (1714–63) was a British poet, landscape gardener, and collector. He was an archetypical 18th-century English “man of taste.”
Born near Halesowen, Worcestershire, Shenstone studied at Solihull Grammar School and Oxford’s Pembroke College.
In 1735, Shenstone inherited the Leasowes Estate in Halesowen in the West Midlands and spent most of his income on ‘landskip gardening’ (a term which he was the first to use) to turn it into a “ferme ornée” or a show garden. His concepts, consisting of forming picturesque views using waterfalls, winding waterways, and winding paths, are outlined in Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening (1764.)
As a poet, Shenstone celebrated simplicity and rustic virtue, foreshadowing the sentiments of the early Romantics. His Poems upon Various Occasions (1737) contained the first version of his best-known poem, “The School-Mistress” (1742;) it was written in imitation of Edmund Spenser. Besides, Shenstone published The Judgement of Hercules (1741,) other odes, elegies, songs, and light verse.
Shenstone’s Pastoral Ballad (1755) helped revive the ballad as a literary form. He also assisted Bishop Percy with Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Shenstone
True honor is to honesty what the court of chancery is to common law.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Honesty
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
Topics: Dress
What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Pleasure
Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Critics
The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty, seems to be chiefly the motive: the truly honest man does that from duty, which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Honesty
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.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Learning
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
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity.
—William Shenstone
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting only their familiars have a key to their hearts as to their garden.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Prudence
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Silence
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.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings, Independence
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
Topics: Money
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fortune
Think when you are enraged at any one, what would probably become your sentiments should he die during the dispute.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Anger
Persons are often misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Dress
The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Letters
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Lying, Lies, Deception/Lying
I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; but I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency.—People’s characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Servants
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Law
Orators and stage-coachmen, when the one wants argument and the other a coat of arms, adorn their cause and their coaches with rhetoric and flower-pots.
—William Shenstone
Extreme volatile and sprightly tempers seem inconsistent with any great enjoyment. There is too much time wasted in the mere transition from one object to another. No room for those deep impressions which are made only by the duration of an idea, and are quite requisite to any strong sensation, either of pleasure or of pain. The bee to collect honey, or the spider to gather poison, must abide some time upon the weed or flower. They whose fluids are mere sal volatile seem rather cheerful than happy men.
—William Shenstone
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
—William Shenstone
Topics: People
I hate a style that is wholly flat and regular, that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Style
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding, than a church organ with devotion, or wane with good nature.
—William Shenstone
Virtue seems to be nothing more than a motion consonant to the system of things; were a planet to fly from its orbit it would represent a vicious man.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Vice
Softness of manner seems to be in painting what smoothness of syllables is in language, affecting the sense of sight or hearing, previous to any correspondent passion.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Painting
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.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Misfortune
Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Poetry
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
Topics: Faults
The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt, who is to leave us something at last.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Economy
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