Top 15 William Shenstone Quotes

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

Prudent men should lock up their motives, giving only their intimates a key.

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

Second thoughts are oftentimes the very worst of all thoughts.

Independency may be found in comparative, as well as absolute abundance: I mean when a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.

There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.

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

A fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.

While we labour to subdue our passions, we should take care not to extinguish them. Subduing our passions, is disengaging ourselves from the world; to which however, Whilst we reside in it, we must always bear relation; and we may detach ourselves to such a degree as to pass an useless and insipid life, which we were not meant to do. Our existence here is at least one part of a system.<p>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 shewing you the grounds of it.

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

Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

Love can be founded upon nature only; or the appearance of it.

It is a miserable thing to love where one hates; and yet it is not inconsistent.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.