Quote

In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Whole
Rooms
Poem
Exhibit
Sometimes
Building
Dramatic
Luckily
Views
Architecture
Resemble
Happy
Parts
Designing
Opportunity
Garden
Gardens
House
View
Exhibits
Place
Design
Epic
Thought
Room
Maintaining
Subordination

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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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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.
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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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Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
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Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
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Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.
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There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.
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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.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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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.
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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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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
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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.
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The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
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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.
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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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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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