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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Lucrative
Poetical
Necessity
Invention
Death
Mother
May

More quotes by William Shenstone

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In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.
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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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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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Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty.
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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.
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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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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.
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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?
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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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Those who are incapable of shining out by dress would do well to consider that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out much to their disadvantage.
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The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
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A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.
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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.
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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
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Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
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Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
William Shenstone
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Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
William Shenstone
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A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
William Shenstone
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It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.
William Shenstone