Quote

It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Would
Passion
Idle
Life
Choices
Favor
Rather
Favors
Keep
Ambition
Rail
Seems
Argument
Amused
Play
Merely
Boundless
Long
Choice
Circumstance
Make
Circumstances
Employed

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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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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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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.
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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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So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
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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.
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When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments when to those of our own sect, we call them trials when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.
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Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
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Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.
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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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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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Nothing is sure in London, except expense.
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Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.
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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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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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People can commend the weather without envy.
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