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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Poetry
Flattering
Diseases
Consumption
Disease

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Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
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Love can be founded upon Nature only.
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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.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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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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Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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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.
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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
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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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The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
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Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.
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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.
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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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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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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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