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A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.

William Shenstone

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William Shenstone
Age: 48 †
Born: 1714
Born: November 18
Died: 1763
Died: February 11
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Perhaps
Branching
Venerable
Inanimate
Oaks
Aged
Large
Objects

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What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.
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It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?
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Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.
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Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.
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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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Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
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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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Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
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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.
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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.
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The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.
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Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
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A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
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Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.
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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.
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It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.
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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.
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Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
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Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
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To thee, fair Freedom! I retire From flattery, cards, and dice, and din: Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.
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