Quote

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

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
Deference
Compliments
Indirect
Elegant
Compliment
Complicate

More quotes by William Shenstone

Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
William Shenstone
Image
The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
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
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
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.
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
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
William Shenstone
Image
It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
Image
Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
William Shenstone
Image
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
William Shenstone
Image
Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
William Shenstone
Image
Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.
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
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
Image
The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.
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