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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
Actions
Importance
Action
Character
Trifles
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More quotes by William Shenstone

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So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.
William Shenstone
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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.
William Shenstone
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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
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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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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.
William Shenstone
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The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.
William Shenstone
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I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.
William Shenstone
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A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.
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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In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.
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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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.
William Shenstone
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Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.
William Shenstone
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Theirs is the present who can praise the past.
William Shenstone
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Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.
William Shenstone
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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
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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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Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
William Shenstone
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
William Shenstone
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It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.
William Shenstone