Top 100 William Shenstone Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.”

— William Shenstone

2. “Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.”

— William Shenstone

3. “Nothing is certain in London but expense.”

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

5. “Whoe’er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.”

— William Shenstone

6. “A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.”

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

8. “A fool and his words are soon parted.”

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

10. “A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.”

— William Shenstone

11. “In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one’s friends.”

— William Shenstone

12. “Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.”

— William Shenstone

13. “Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.”

— William Shenstone

14. “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.”

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

17. “Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.”

— William Shenstone

18. “Oft has good nature been the fool’s defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.”

— William Shenstone

19. “I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.”

— William Shenstone

20. “However, I think a plain space near the eye gives it a kind of liberty it loves; and then the picture, whether you choose the grand or beautiful, should be held up at its proper distance. Variety is the principal ingredient in beauty; and simplicity is essential to grandeur.”

— William Shenstone

21. “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.”

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

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

— William Shenstone

24. “Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.”

— William Shenstone

25. “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.”

— William Shenstone

26. “So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.”

— William Shenstone

27. “My banks they are furnish’d with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.”

— William Shenstone

28. “Patience is the panacea; but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?”

— William Shenstone

29. “A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.”

— William Shenstone

30. “Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.”

— William Shenstone

31. “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

32. “Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.”

— William Shenstone

33. “Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.”

— William Shenstone

34. “Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.”

— William Shenstone

35. “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.”

— William Shenstone

36. “Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.”

— William Shenstone

37. “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

38. “Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.”

— William Shenstone

39. “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.”

— William Shenstone

40. “Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman’s in regard to money.”

— William Shenstone

41. “Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.”

— William Shenstone

42. “The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.”

— William Shenstone

43. “The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.”

— William Shenstone

44. “Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.”

— William Shenstone

45. “Love can be founded upon Nature only.”

— William Shenstone

46. “A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.”

— William Shenstone

47. “Love is a pleasing but a various clime.”

— William Shenstone

48. “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

49. “Independence 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.”

— William Shenstone

50. “Persons are oftentimes 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.”

— William Shenstone