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SHENSTONE, William Quotes
(1714-1763), English poet
The profession of the player, like that of the painter, is one of the imitative arts, whose means are pleasure, and whose end should be virtue.
Consider, when you are enraged at anyone, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than with over assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the effect of downright stupidity.
I fancy the proper means for increasing the love we bear to our native country, is, to reside some time in a foreign one.
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.
There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is, that people can commend it without envy.
Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
Deference is the most delicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments, and before company is the genteelest kind of flattery.
There is nothing displays the quickness of genius more than a dispute—as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other's lustre.—But perhaps the odds is against the man of taste in this particular.
A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person; it may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love.
Persons are often misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty.
The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt, who is to leave us something at last.
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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.
Deference before company is the genteelest kind of flattery. The flattery of epistles affects one less, as they cannot be shown without an appearance of vanity. Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract of tincture be ever so agreeable.
Fools are often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
It has been a maxim with me to admit of easy reconciliation with a person whose offence proceeded from no depravity of heart; but where I was convinced it did so, to forego, for my own sake, all opportunities of revenge. I have derived no small share of happiness from this principle.
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
True honor is to honesty what the court of chancery is to common law.
The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty, seems to be chiefly the motive: the truly honest man does that from duty, which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.
Independency 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.
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy our uneasiness under it.
A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use; or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.
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.
When the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends.
They begin with making falsehood appear like truth, and end with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
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.
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, that will not bear too familiar approaches.
Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent. A man is hated sometimes for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
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.
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.
The lines of poetry, the periods of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity.
Orators and stage-coachmen, when the one wants argument and the other a coat of arms, adorn their cause and their coaches with rhetoric and flower-pots.
Softness of manner seems to be in painting what smoothness of syllables is in language, affecting the sense of sight or hearing, previous to any correspondent passion.
The proper means of increasing the love we bear to our native country, is to reside some time in a foreign one.
The vacant skull of a pedant generally furnishes out a throne and temple for vanity.
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.
Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is onty blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
Men are sometimes accused of pride merely because their accusers would be proud themselves if they were in their places.
Prudent men lock up their motives, letting only their familiars have a key to their hearts as to their garden.
I consider your very testy and quarrelsome people as I do a loaded gun, which may, by accident, at any time, go off and kill people.
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank, than those who have no rank at all.
I think I never knew an instance of great quickness of parts being joined with great solidity. The most rapid rivers are seldom or never deep.
A reserved man is in continual conflict with the social part of his nature, and even grudges himself the laugh into which he is sometimes betrayed.
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.
Some reserve is a debt to prudence, as freedom and simplicity of conversation is a debt to good nature.
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding, than a church organ with devotion, or wane with good nature.
I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; but 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.
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
It is impossible that an ill-natured man can have a public spirit; for how should he love ten thousand men, who never loved one?
High spirit in man is like a sword, which, though worn to annoy his enemies, yet is often troublesome to his friends: he can hardly wear it so inoffensively but it is apt to incommode one or other of the company: it is more properly a loaded pistol, which accident alone may fire and kill one.
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.
I hate a style that is wholly flat and regular, that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
Pastime is a word that should never be used but in a bad sense; it is vile to say a thing is agreeable, because it helps to pass the time away.
The proper means of increasing the love we bear to our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
Trifles discover a character more than actions of importance. In regard to the former, a person is off his guard, and thinks it not material to use disguise. It is no imperfect hint toward the discovery of a man's character to say he looks as though you might be certain of finding a pin upon his sleeve.
Virtue seems to be nothing more than a motion consonant to the system of things; were a planet to fly from its orbit it would represent a vicious man.
Extreme volatile and sprightly tempers seem inconsistent with any great enjoyment. There is too much time wasted in the mere transition from one object to another. No room for those deep impressions which are made only by the duration of an idea, and are quite requisite to any strong sensation, either of pleasure or of pain. The bee to collect honey, or the spider to gather poison, must abide some time upon the weed or flower. They whose fluids are mere sal volatile seem rather cheerful than happy men.
Let the gulled fool the toils of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
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