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There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Expedient
Poetry
Song
Certain
Seems

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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I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life birth itself does but little.
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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.
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Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
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Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.
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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
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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
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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
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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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A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
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Nothing is sure in London, except expense.
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Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
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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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Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.
William Shenstone