Quote

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

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
People
Show
Lowest
Shows
Ice
Persons
Breaking
Person
Fault
Find
Generally
Firsts
Faults
Emerged
First
Consider
Lately
Never
Especially
Obscurity

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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.
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Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.
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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.
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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
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A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
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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.
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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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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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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
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Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.
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A fool and his words are soon parted.
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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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There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day the reason is that people can commend it without envy.
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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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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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