Quote

Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.

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
Persons
Many
Haughtiness
Insolent
Behaved
Exalted
Assume
Assuming
Humility

More quotes by William Shenstone

Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
William Shenstone
Image
The fund of sensible discourse is limited that of jest and badinerie is infinite.
William Shenstone
Image
I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life birth itself does but little.
William Shenstone
Image
A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.
William Shenstone
Image
There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
William Shenstone
Image
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
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
Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
William Shenstone
Image
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
William Shenstone
Image
Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.
William Shenstone
Image
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
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
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
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
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
A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.
William Shenstone
Image
Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.
William Shenstone