In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts; the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem.

William Shenstone

Categorized in : Opportunity Epic Garden

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

William Shenstone

ends liars lying

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

William Shenstone

love mean country

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

William Shenstone

fragrance virtue essence

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

William Shenstone

deference indirect compliment

To one who said, "I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world," another replied, "It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself."

William Shenstone

men believe lying

A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

William Shenstone

rich money men

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 or tincture be ever so agreeable.

William Shenstone

applause flattery kind

Nothing is sure in London, except expense.

William Shenstone

expenses london

A fool and his words are soon parted.

William Shenstone

foolishness fool witty

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

William Shenstone

praise past

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.

William Shenstone

texture break-through law

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.

William Shenstone

good-man purpose use

The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.

William Shenstone

wine power white

Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.

William Shenstone

perfect-beauty health perfect

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.

William Shenstone

knaves honesty pain

Love can be founded upon Nature only.

William Shenstone

nature

I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.

William Shenstone

causes people years

The works of a person that begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve. In this, planting promises a more lasting pleasure than building; which, were it to remain in equal perfection, would at best begin to moulder and want repairs in imagination. Now trees have a circumstance that suits our taste, and that is annual variety.

William Shenstone

imagination perfection tree

There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.

William Shenstone

court quality country

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.

William Shenstone

obscurity ice people