Quote

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

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
Able
Vulgar
Great
Fancy
Would
Instance
Otherwise
Taste
Trifling
Fashion
Instances
Upon
Distinguish
Persons
Restraint

More quotes by William Shenstone

Image
Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
William Shenstone
Image
Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.
William Shenstone
Image
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.
William Shenstone
Image
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
William Shenstone
Image
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
Image
Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
William Shenstone
Image
Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.
William Shenstone
Image
Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
William Shenstone
Image
The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
William Shenstone
Image
Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.
William Shenstone
Image
Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
William Shenstone
Image
Patience is the panacea but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?
William Shenstone
Image
The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
William Shenstone
Image
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
Image
Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.
William Shenstone
Image
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.
William Shenstone
Image
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