William Shenstone

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.

What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.