William Shenstone Quotes - Page 3

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.

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

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.

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

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.

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.

Love is a pleasing but a various clime.

What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.

Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.

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

Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

People can commend the weather without envy.

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

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.

Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.

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

There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.

Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.

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

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.