William Shenstone
English poet and landscape gardener (1714-1763)
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.

QuotesEdit
- 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)Edit
- 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)Edit
- 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
External linksEdit
- Shenstone and the Leasowes at the Revolutionary Players website
- Text of The Schoolmistress
- Essay, William Shenstone and the Leasowes: the English Landscape Garden in Transition, c.1740-1763
- Complete text, with annotations, of Shenstone's Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening (1764)
- Selected Works
- Free eBook of Familiar Quotation at Project Gutenberg has quotations by William Shenstone