Quote

Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.

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
Refractory
Pupil
Pupils
Wit
Judgment

More quotes by 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
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
Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.
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
In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
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
I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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
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
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
Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
Image
Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.
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
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.
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
Image
Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
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
A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.
William Shenstone
Image
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
William Shenstone