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Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Otherwise
Taste
Trifling
Fashion
Instances
Upon
Distinguish
Persons
Restraint
Able
Vulgar
Great
Fancy
Would
Instance

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Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.
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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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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.
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Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
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To one who said, I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world, another replied, It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself.
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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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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
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Love can be founded upon Nature only.
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
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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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A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
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Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.
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It happens a little unluckily that the persons who have the most infinite contempt of money are the same that have the strongest appetite for the pleasures it procures.
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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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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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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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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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