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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Praise
Present
Past

More quotes by William Shenstone

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The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
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The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
William Shenstone
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People can commend the weather without envy.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
William Shenstone
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Love can be founded upon Nature only.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
William Shenstone
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone