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We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Word
Gentleman
Sense
Acquire
Nature
Crowds
May
Sufficient
Ennoble
Best
Discover
Gentility
Human
Daily
Constitute
Humans
Wealth
Virtues
Virtue
Possess

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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
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A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover.
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Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
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However, I think a plain space near the eye gives it a kind of liberty it loves and then the picture, whether you choose the grand or beautiful, should be held up at its proper distance. Variety is the principal ingredient in beauty and simplicity is essential to grandeur.
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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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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
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Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
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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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A fool and his words are soon parted.
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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.
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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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Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
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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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Nothing is sure in London, except expense.
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It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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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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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
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