William Shenstone Quotes

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

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.

A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.

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.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

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.

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

A fool and his words are soon parted.

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.

What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.

The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.

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."

The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.

Patience is the panacea; but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

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.

A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.

A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.

So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.

I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; 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.

Love can be founded upon Nature only.

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.

A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.

Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.

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.

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.

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.

Persons are oftentimes 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.

Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.

Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.

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.

I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.

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.