William Shenstone famous quotes

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

#Liars #Ends #Falsehood

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

#Love #Country #Mean

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
-- William Shenstone

#Essence #Virtue #Fragrance

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Law #Texture #Littles

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Atmosphere #Letters #Spirit

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

#Prudent #Modesty #Be Careful

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

#Heart #Men #Garden

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Honesty #Character #Men

I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.
-- William Shenstone

#Names #I Am Thankful #Obnoxious

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
-- William Shenstone

#Past #Praise

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Mean #People #Littles

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

#Pride #Men #Would Be

There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.
-- William Shenstone

#Country #Quality #Preservation

Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
-- William Shenstone

#Wine #Understanding #Church

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

#Order #Accomplishment #People

I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
-- William Shenstone

#Learning #Oil #Lamps

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

#Learning #Coins #May

The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.
-- William Shenstone

#Infinite #Jest #Sensible

Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
-- William Shenstone

#Character #Giving #Almighty

Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
-- William Shenstone

#Children #Men #Fists

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

#Compliment #Indirect #Deference

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

#Doe #Intimacy #Sensitive

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

#Anger #Moving #World

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

#Jealousy #Envy #Apprehension

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

#Extravagance #Income #Cascade

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Gentleman #May #Crowds

The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
-- William Shenstone

#Enemy #Armor #Addresses

Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
-- William Shenstone

#Simple #Mind #Relax

A court of heraldry sprung up to supply the place of crusade exploits, to grant imaginary shields and trophies to families that never wore real armor, and it is but of late that it has been discovered to have no real jurisdiction.
-- William Shenstone

#Real #Shields #Trophies

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Honesty #Pain #Knaves

When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived.
-- William Shenstone

#Honesty #Book #Men

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
-- William Shenstone

#Heart #Contentment #May

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

#Animal #Vines #Pruning

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Color #Choices #Style

The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.
-- William Shenstone

#Sympathy #Coffee #Men

It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
-- William Shenstone

#Taste #Wit #Good Nature

Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
-- William Shenstone

#Taste #Good Nature #Connected

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.
-- William Shenstone

#Fashion #Taste #Expenses

Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.
-- William Shenstone

#Thankfulness #Thanks

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
-- William Shenstone

#Character #Action #Importance

A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
-- William Shenstone

#Inanimate Objects

The works of a person that begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve. In this, planting promises a more lasting pleasure than building; which, were it to remain in equal perfection, would at best begin to moulder and want repairs in imagination. Now trees have a circumstance that suits our taste, and that is annual variety.
-- William Shenstone

#Imagination #Perfection #Tree

In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
-- William Shenstone

#Tree #Littles #Village

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.
-- William Shenstone

#Essence #Bears #Virtue

Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.
-- William Shenstone

#Writing #Musical #Style

There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
-- William Shenstone

#Song #Certain

Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
-- William Shenstone

#War #Fool #Toil

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

#Enemy #May #Littles

Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best indivious and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy.
-- William Shenstone

#Men #Quality #Dresses

Those who are incapable of shining out by dress would do well to consider that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out much to their disadvantage.
-- William Shenstone

#Clothes #Shining #Dresses

Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.
-- William Shenstone

#Fashion #Fancy #Able

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
-- William Shenstone

#Together #Woods #Fool

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Friendship #Passion #Tree

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

#Trials #Matter #Way

Love can be founded upon Nature only.
-- William Shenstone

#Nature

Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.
-- William Shenstone

#Hero #Eye #Prize

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.
-- William Shenstone

#Silly #Character #People

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

#Silence #Gains #Deference

I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
-- William Shenstone

#Years #People #Causes

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
-- William Shenstone

#Perfect #Assurance