William Shenstone

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.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.

A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind.

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.

The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.

A fool and his words are soon parted.

The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

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.

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

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.

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.