There is nothing displays the quickness of genius more than a dispute—as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other’s lustre.—But perhaps the odds is against the man of taste in this particular.
—William Shenstone
Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than with over assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the effect of downright stupidity.
—William Shenstone
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fortune
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.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Hope
The profession of the player, like that of the painter, is one of the imitative arts, whose means are pleasure, and whose end should be virtue.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Actors
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
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding, than a church organ with devotion, or wane with good nature.
—William Shenstone
Fools are often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fools
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
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
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Wealth, Money
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
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity.
—William Shenstone
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
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
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting only their familiars have a key to their hearts as to their garden.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Prudence
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Style
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
Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives those who labor under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Modesty
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
The vacant skull of a pedant generally furnishes out a throne and temple for vanity.
—William Shenstone
Let the gulled fool the toils of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
—William Shenstone
Topics: War
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank, than those who have no rank at all.
—William Shenstone
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
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: Zeal, Enthusiasm
What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Pleasure
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
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
A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Criticism, Judgment, Critics
Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent. A man is hated sometimes for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Modesty
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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