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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

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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.
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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
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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.
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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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The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
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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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A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
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Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
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A fool and his words are soon parted.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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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.
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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
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Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.
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A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love.
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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.
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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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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.
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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
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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.
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