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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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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Beauty
Diminish
Often
Latter
Opposite
Variety
Simplicity
Former
Opposites
Akin
Increase
Grandeur

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My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
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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.
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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
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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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Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.
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The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.
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The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
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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.
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Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
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Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
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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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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
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Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
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In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem.
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A fool and his words are soon parted.
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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.
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