Quote

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire From flattery, cards, and dice, and din: Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.

William Shenstone

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Art
Fair
Inns
Lows
Mansions
Thou
Dice
Humble
Retire
Thee
Flattery
Higher
Retiring
Freedom
Cards
Found
Fairs

More quotes by William Shenstone

Image
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
Image
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
William Shenstone
Image
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
William Shenstone
Image
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
William Shenstone
Image
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
William Shenstone
Image
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
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.
William Shenstone