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Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
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More quotes by William Shenstone

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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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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Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
William Shenstone
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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
William Shenstone
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Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best indivious and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy.
William Shenstone
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
William Shenstone
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
William Shenstone
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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
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Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.
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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The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
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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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.
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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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone