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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.

William Shenstone

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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

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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
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We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.
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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So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
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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
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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
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It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.
William Shenstone
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Nothing is certain in London but expense.
William Shenstone
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To one who said, I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world, another replied, It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself.
William Shenstone
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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
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
William Shenstone
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
William Shenstone
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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.
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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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
William Shenstone
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Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.
William Shenstone
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My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
William Shenstone
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Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
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.
William Shenstone
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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