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

William Shenstone (13 November 1714 – 11 February 1763) was an English poet, essayist and one of the earliest practitoners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.

Quotes

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
  • Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,
    And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
    • To a Lady (1736)
  • Whoe'er has traveled 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.
    • Written at an Inn at Henley (1758), st. 6. Compare: " From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,— Path, motive, guide, original, and end", Samuel Johnson, Motto to the Rambler, No. 7
  • Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.
    • On Writing and Books
  • A fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.
    • On Reserve
  • Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
    • Elegies, no. 5, st. 3
  • So sweetly she bade me adieu,
    I thought that she bade me return.
    • A Pastoral, part I
  • I have found out a gift for my fair;
    I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.
    • A Pastoral, part I
  • My banks they are furnish’d with bees,
    Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
    • A Pastoral, part II, "Hope".
  • For seldom shall she hear a tale
    So sad, so tender, and so true.
    • Jemmy Dawson (c. 1745), st. 20

The Schoolmistress (1737-48)

Full text online
  • Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
    Emblem right meet of decency does yield.
    • Stanza 6
  • Pun-provoking thyme.
    • Stanza 11
  • A little bench of heedless bishops here,
    And there a chancellor in embryo.
    • Stanza 28

Essays on Men and Manners (1804)

Shenstone's Essays on Men and Manners in One Volume, online
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.
  • Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice: whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.
  • Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.
  • There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.
  • A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happens to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
  • Prudent men should lock up their motives, giving only their intimates a key.
  • 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.
  • A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
  • Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
    • "Detached Thoughts : On Writing and Books", p. 129
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