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Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Distance
Objects
Beauty
Even
Offensive
Acquire
Proper
Degree
Degrees

More quotes by 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.
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Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
William Shenstone
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The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
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The fund of sensible discourse is limited that of jest and badinerie is infinite.
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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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 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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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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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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Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
William Shenstone
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May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
William Shenstone
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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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The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
William Shenstone
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Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.
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Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.
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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In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone