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Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Trifles
Discover
Actions
Importance
Action
Character

More quotes by William Shenstone

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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
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.
William Shenstone
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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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Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.
William Shenstone
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
William Shenstone
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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
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Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.
William Shenstone
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Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief. while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Nothing is certain in London but expense.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Misers, as death approaches, are heaping up a chest of reasons to stand in more awe of him.
William Shenstone
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Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
William Shenstone
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Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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What leads to unhappiness is making pleasure the chief aim.
William Shenstone
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It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.
William Shenstone
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The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
William Shenstone