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
Some reserve is a debt to prudence, as freedom and simplicity of conversation is a debt to good nature.
—William Shenstone
The proper means of increasing the love we bear to our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Country, Patriotism, Travel, Opportunities, Reality
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
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fortune
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
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting only their familiars have a key to their hearts as to their garden.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Prudence
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy our uneasiness under it.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Jealousy
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Enthusiasm, Zeal
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 regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt, who is to leave us something at last.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Economy
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lying, Lies
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
Let the gulled fool the toils of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
—William Shenstone
Topics: War
I think I never knew an instance of great quickness of parts being joined with great solidity. The most rapid rivers are seldom or never deep.
—William Shenstone
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
Deference before company is the genteelest kind of flattery. The flattery of epistles affects one less, as they cannot be shown without an appearance of vanity. 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 of tincture be ever so agreeable.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Flattery
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
—William Shenstone
Topics: People
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
—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
When the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one’s friends.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Letters
Pastime is a word that should never be used but in a bad sense; it is vile to say a thing is agreeable, because it helps to pass the time away.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Time
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
The lines of poetry, the periods of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be pre eminently musical.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Music
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
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
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank, than those who have no rank at all.
—William Shenstone
Men are sometimes accused of pride merely because their accusers would be proud themselves if they were in their places.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Pride
True honor is to honesty what the court of chancery is to common law.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Honesty
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Vita Sackville-West British Writer
- Francis Thompson English Poet
- Edmund Spenser English Poet
- Philip James Bailey English Poet
- Philip Larkin English Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley English Poet
- Anne Bradstreet American Poet
- Edwin Arnold English Poet
- John Webster English Dramatist
- Hartley Coleridge British Poet
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