William Shenstone

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.

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

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

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

— William Shenstone

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

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

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

Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,And honest meaning gilded want of sense.

— William Shenstone

Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round,The warmest welcome, at an inn.

— William Shenstone

Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

— William Shenstone

A fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.

— William Shenstone

Love is a pleasing but a various clime.

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

I have found out a gift for my fair;I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.

— William Shenstone

My banks they are furnish’d with bees,Whose murmur invites one to sleep.

— William Shenstone

For seldom shall she hear a taleSo sad, so tender, and so true.

— William Shenstone

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,Emblem right meet of decency does yield.

— William Shenstone

Pun-provoking thyme.

— William Shenstone

A little bench of heedless bishops here,And there a chancellor in embryo.

— William Shenstone

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

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

— William Shenstone

There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.

— William Shenstone

A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happens to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.

— William Shenstone

Prudent men should lock up their motives, giving only their intimates a key.

— William Shenstone

While we labour to subdue our passions, we should take care not to extinguish them. Subduing our passions, is disengaging ourselves from the world; to which however, Whilst we reside in it, we must always bear relation; and we may detach ourselves to such a degree as to pass an useless and insipid life, which we were not meant to do. Our existence here is at least one part of a system.

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

— William Shenstone