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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
Present
Past
Praise

More quotes by William Shenstone

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The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.
William Shenstone
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Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
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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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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Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
William Shenstone
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Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.
William Shenstone
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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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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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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.
William Shenstone
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Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
William Shenstone
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
William Shenstone
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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.
William Shenstone
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Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.
William Shenstone
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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.
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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Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.
William Shenstone
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A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
William Shenstone