William Shenstone Quotes - Page 2

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire From flattery, cards, and dice, and din: Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.

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

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

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.

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.

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

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

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

However, I think a plain space near the eye gives it a kind of liberty it loves; and then the picture, whether you choose the grand or beautiful, should be held up at its proper distance. Variety is the principal ingredient in beauty; and simplicity is essential to grandeur.

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

What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.

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

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.

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