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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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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Complicate
Deference
Compliments
Indirect
Elegant
Compliment

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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.
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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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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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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.
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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.
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People can commend the weather without envy.
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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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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.
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Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.
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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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Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
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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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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.
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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.
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A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.
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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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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.
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
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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
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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.
William Shenstone