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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

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Like
Presents
Camps
Addresses
Resolution
Throwing
Lady
Recover
Enemy
Armor
Making
Camp

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Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
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Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.
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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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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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Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
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May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
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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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A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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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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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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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
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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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Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
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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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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.
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