Top 100 Horace Walpole Quotes
#2. Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.
Horace Walpole
#3. When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole
#4. Serendipity ... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.
Horace Walpole
#5. To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know.
Horace Walpole
#6. An ancient prophecy ... pronounced, That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it!
Horace Walpole
#7. Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories
Horace Walpole
#8. The contempt of money is no more a virtue than to wash one's hand is one; but one does not willingly shake hands with a man that never washes his.
Horace Walpole
#9. Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.
Horace Walpole
#10. Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.
Horace Walpole
#11. The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.
Horace Walpole
#12. Historic justice is due to all characters. Who would not vindicate Henry the Eighth or Charles the Second, if found to be falsely traduced? Why then not Richard the Third?
Horace Walpole
#13. Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
Horace Walpole
#15. Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!
Horace Walpole
#16. Lawyers and rogues are vermin not easily rooted out of a rich soil.
Horace Walpole
#17. [The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste
or is but half taste.
Horace Walpole
#18. Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.
Horace Walpole
#20. [Corneille] was inspired by Roman authors and Roman spirit, Racine with delicacy by the polished court of Louis XIV.
Horace Walpole
#21. There is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man , except an unlearned one .
Horace Walpole
#22. Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees.
Horace Walpole
#23. Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.
Horace Walpole
#24. It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
Horace Walpole
#25. How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
Horace Walpole
#26. How much on outward show does all depend,
If virtues from within no lustre lend!
Strip off th'externals M and Y, the rest
Proves Majesty itself is but a Jest.
Horace Walpole
#27. The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy.
Horace Walpole
#28. We must cultivate our garden.
Furia to God one day in seven allots;
The other six to scandal she devotes.
Satan, by false devotion never flammed,
Bets six to one, that Furia will be damned.
Horace Walpole
#29. There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.
Horace Walpole
#31. I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.
Horace Walpole
#32. My aversion to them ... springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society-I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.
Horace Walpole
#33. Of Ickworth's boys, their father's joys,
There is but one a bad one;
The tenth is he, the parson's fee,
And indeed he is a sad one.
No love of fame, no sense of shame,
And a bad heart, let me tell ye:
Without, all brass; within, all ass,
And the puppy's name is Felly.
Horace Walpole
#34. Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.
Horace Walpole
#35. It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my author's defects.
Horace Walpole
#37. Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.
Horace Walpole
#38. I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense
but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd
for sense cannot be counterfeited.
Horace Walpole
#39. Art is the filigrain of a little mind, and is twisted and involved and curled, but would reach farther if laid out in a straight line.
Horace Walpole
#40. The best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.
Horace Walpole
#41. History is a romance that is believed; romance, a history that is not believed.
Horace Walpole
#42. I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one.
Horace Walpole
#43. Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!
Horace Walpole
#44. Fashion is always silly, for, before it can spread far, it must be calculated for silly people; as examples of sense, wit, or ingenuity could be imitated only by a few.
Horace Walpole
#45. I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery.
Horace Walpole
#46. Lord Bath used to say of women, who are apt to say that they will follow their own judgment, that they could not follow a worse guide.
Horace Walpole
#48. If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary. The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner stone of our liberty.
Horace Walpole
#49. By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
Horace Walpole
#50. We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one, fear of the dark; to another, of physical pain; to a third, of public ridicule; to a fourth, of poverty; to a fifth, of loneliness ... for all of us, our particular creature waits in ambush.
Horace Walpole
#51. One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed,
Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.
Horace Walpole
#52. I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.
Horace Walpole
#53. The whole [Scotch] nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.
Horace Walpole
#54. Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
Horace Walpole
#55. The gentle maid, whose hapless tale,
these melancholy pages speak;
say, gracious lady, shall she fail
To draw the tear a down from thy cheek?
Horace Walpole
#56. A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweller, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more.
Horace Walpole
#57. Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff:
Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.
Horace Walpole
#58. It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
Horace Walpole
#59. I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
Horace Walpole
#60. Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
Horace Walpole
#61. I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.
Horace Walpole
#62. The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole
#63. Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.
Horace Walpole
#64. I sit with my toes in a brook, And if any one axes forwhy? I hits them a rap with my crook, For 'tis sentiment does it, says I.
Horace Walpole
#66. Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Horace Walpole
#67. The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
Horace Walpole
#68. A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.
Horace Walpole
#69. I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.
Horace Walpole
#70. Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.
Horace Walpole
#71. I desired you once before," said Manfred angrily, "not to name that woman: from this hour she must be a stranger to you, as she must be to me. In short, Isabella, since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself.
Horace Walpole
#72. The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Horace Walpole
#74. I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.
Horace Walpole
#75. Two clergymen disputing whether ordination would be valid without the imposition of both hands, the more formal one said, Do you think the Holy Dove could fly down with only one wing?
Horace Walpole
#76. The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.
Horace Walpole
#78. Nothing has shown more fully the prodigious ignorance of human ideas and their littleness, than the discovery of [Sir William] Herschell, that what used to be called the Milky Way is a portion of perhaps an infinite multitude of worlds!
Horace Walpole
#79. We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.
Horace Walpole
#80. This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with regret.
Horace Walpole
#81. It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.
Horace Walpole
#82. Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.
Horace Walpole
#83. When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora's box. "What! all!" said the Prince. "Yes, all." "No," said the Prince; "curiosity must have been without.
Horace Walpole
#84. Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians.
Horace Walpole
#85. The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Horace Walpole
#86. Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
Horace Walpole
#87. Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.
Horace Walpole
#88. The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.
Horace Walpole
#89. Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
Horace Walpole
#90. Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.
Horace Walpole
#91. Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
Horace Walpole
#93. When Shakespeare copied chroniclers verbatim, it was because he knew they were good enough for his audiences. In a more polished age he who could so move our passions, could surely have performed the easier task of satisfying our taste.
Horace Walpole
#94. [French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity.
Horace Walpole
#95. It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.
Horace Walpole
#96. A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections; he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.
Horace Walpole
#97. How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted.
Horace Walpole
#98. I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted.
Horace Walpole
#99. My veracity is dearer to me than my life," said the peasant; "nor would I purchase the one by forfeiting the other.
Horace Walpole
#100. Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
Horace Walpole
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