William Shenstone
William Shenstone
William Shenstonewas an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 November 1714
together woods fool
Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
friendship passion tree
A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.
trials matter way
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.
hero eye prize
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.
silly character people
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.
silence gains deference
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
war fool toil
Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.
writing musical style
Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.
london expenses
Nothing is sure in London, except expense.
revenge anger fighting
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.
money littles infinite
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.
poet very-good critics
Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
efficacy increase insincerity
Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
opposites simplicity latter
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.