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Wikipedia Summary for Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician.
He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. They have been published by Yale University Press in 48 volumes.
The youngest son of the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, he became the 4th and last Earl of Orford on his nephew's death in 1791. His barony of Walpole descended to his first cousin once removed of the same name but Baron Walpole of Wolterton. Horatio Walpole the younger was later created a new Earl of Orford.
The best philosophy is to do one's duties, to take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is.
The establishment of a society for the encouragement of arts will produce great benefits before they are perverted to mischiefs.
One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.
To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know.
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.
The most remarkable thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no people so obviously mad as the English.
He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
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.
Pictures may serve as helps to religion but are only an appendix to idolatry, for the people must be taught to believe in false gods and in the power of saints before they will learn to worship their images.
It is charming to totter into vogue.
The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy.
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.
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.
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.
The farther I travel, the less I wonder at anything: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen custom; and men are so much the same everywhere, that one scare perceives a change in situation.
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.
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.
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.
A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.
Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!
Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.
Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees.
Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.
Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.
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.
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.
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.
Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff:
Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.
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.
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.
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
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.
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.
Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.
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.
I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.
He would be a very absurd legislator who should pretend to set bounds to his country's welfare, lest it should perish by knowing no bounds.
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.
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!
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!
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?
A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not mis-become a monarch.
King René of Anjou (1409-80) would not listen to the news of his son having lost the Kingdom of Naples, because he would not bedisturbed when painting a picture of a partridge.
I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.
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.
That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.
Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.
Lawyers and rogues are vermin not easily rooted out of a rich soil.
When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.
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.
Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.
There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.
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.
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.
The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.
Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions of Baalbec and Palmyra.
The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.
René of Anjou (1409-80) painted a picture of his mistress's corpse as he found it eaten by worms on having it her tomb openedon his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This is another instance of the strange mixture of religion and gallantry in those ages.
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.
The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.
We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.
The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.
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.
The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.
It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.
Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
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.
I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.
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.
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
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.
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.