William Shenstone
William Shenstone was an English poet, writer, and horticulturist of the eighteenth century, born on 29 November 1714 in Halesowen.
He was educated at Solihull School before going on to Pembroke College, and he worked throughout his life in the English language as both a poet and a writer. His activities extended well beyond literary composition, as he was also a practicing gardener and horticulturist who devoted considerable attention to the grounds of his estate. He died on 11 February 1763 in Halesowen, the same town in which he had been born, having spent much of his life there as a citizen of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Shenstone is noted as one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening, a distinction he earned through the development of his estate, The Leasowes. His dual engagement with written work in verse and prose on one hand, and the deliberate shaping of natural terrain on the other, gives his career a character that spans literary and horticultural practice. The Leasowes stands as the concrete expression of his place in the early history of landscape gardening.
Quotes by William Shenstone
William Shenstone's insights on:
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one’s finger.
It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other’s luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.
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.
I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People’s characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.
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.”