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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.

William Shenstone

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

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Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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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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So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
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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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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 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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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.
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Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.
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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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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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Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.
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May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
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When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments when to those of our own sect, we call them trials when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.
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Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
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Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
William Shenstone
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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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The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
William Shenstone