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
Fools are often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fools
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: Gratitude, Independence, Blessings, Appreciation
The vacant skull of a pedant generally furnishes out a throne and temple for vanity.
—William Shenstone
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
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
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
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
Let the gulled fool the toils of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
—William Shenstone
Topics: War
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
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
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Style
High spirit in man is like a sword, which, though worn to annoy his enemies, yet is often troublesome to his friends: he can hardly wear it so inoffensively but it is apt to incommode one or other of the company: it is more properly a loaded pistol, which accident alone may fire and kill one.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Spirit
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
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
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
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
Trifles discover a character more than actions of importance. In regard to the former, a person is off his guard, and thinks it not material to use disguise. It is no imperfect hint toward the discovery of a man’s character to say he looks as though you might be certain of finding a pin upon his sleeve.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Trifles
When the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one’s friends.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Letters
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
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
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
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity.
—William Shenstone
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, that will not bear too familiar approaches.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Modesty
The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is onty blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Popularity
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank, than those who have no rank at all.
—William Shenstone
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
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
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
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
Think when you are enraged at any one, what would probably become your sentiments should he die during the dispute.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Anger
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting only their familiars have a key to their hearts as to their garden.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Prudence
Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one’s finger.
—William Shenstone
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
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
—William Shenstone
Topics: People
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding, than a church organ with devotion, or wane with good nature.
—William Shenstone
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Money, Wealth
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
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
—William Shenstone
Topics: Fortune
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Vita Sackville-West English Gardener
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 English Writer