152 Quotes by William Shenstone

Nothing is sure in London, except expense.

Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment.

A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.

When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.

A court of heraldry sprung up to supply the place of crusade exploits, to grant imaginary shields and trophies to families that never wore real armor, and it is but of late that it has been discovered to have no real jurisdiction.

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.