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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Prudent
Reserve
Distinguish
Reserves
Modesty
Careful
Ever
Amiable

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Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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I am thankful that my name in obnoxious to no pun.
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What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.
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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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Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.
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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.
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Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
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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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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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The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
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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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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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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
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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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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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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
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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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