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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
Garden
Eels
Along
Slides
Style
Rises
Call
Wholly
Hate
Flat
Writing
Flats
Never
Inequality
Like
Regular

More quotes by William Shenstone

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
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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.
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The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.
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It happens a little unluckily that the persons who have the most infinite contempt of money are the same that have the strongest appetite for the pleasures it procures.
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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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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.
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My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
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In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
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People can commend the weather without envy.
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Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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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.
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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.
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The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
William Shenstone