Quotes by William Shenstone

• 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.
• His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.
• 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.
• 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.
• Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.
• 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.
• Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
• The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
• 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.
• Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
• Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.
• A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
• Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
• What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.
• The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
• Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
• Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
• A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
• A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind.
• The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
• A fool and his words are soon parted.
• The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
• There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.
• Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.