William Shenstone Quotations | Page 2

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

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.

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.

Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

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

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

Avarice is the most oppose of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive.

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.

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.

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.