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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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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Even
Discover
Reserve
Would
Degrees
Reserves
World
Necessary
Attain
Prove
Accomplishment
People
Honest
Necessity
Imagine
Absolutes
Expedient
Order
Absolute
Deference
Seems
Degree
Accomplishments

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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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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
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I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
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The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.
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In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends.
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The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
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Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.
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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.
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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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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.
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Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.
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Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
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Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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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.
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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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A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
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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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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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