Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Advantage
Asses
Taught
Vines
Animal
Originally
Called
Ass
Certain
Compare
Must
Excuse
Great
Critics
Gnawing
Animals
Pruning

More quotes by William Shenstone

Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives those who labor under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.
William Shenstone
Image
Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
Image
A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
William Shenstone
Image
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
William Shenstone
Image
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
William Shenstone
Image
Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
William Shenstone
Image
Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
William Shenstone
Image
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.
William Shenstone
Image
Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
William Shenstone
Image
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
William Shenstone