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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.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Style
Rises
Call
Wholly
Hate
Flat
Writing
Flats
Never
Inequality
Like
Regular
Garden
Eels
Along
Slides

More quotes by William Shenstone

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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
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It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?
William Shenstone
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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
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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.
William Shenstone
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The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
William Shenstone
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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
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Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
William Shenstone
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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
William Shenstone
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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
William Shenstone
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Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
William Shenstone
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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.
William Shenstone
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
William Shenstone
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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
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Patience is the panacea but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?
William Shenstone
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It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
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A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
William Shenstone
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Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
William Shenstone
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Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
William Shenstone
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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
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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