Quotes from Horace Walpole

Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years. ... They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.

Let the French but have England, and they won't want to conquer it.

Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.

The world is a comedy to those who think; a tragedy to those who feel.

This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.

To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know.

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 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.

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.

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

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.

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.

To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know and 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, whatever it is; and despise affectation.

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses one misses more nonsense than sense.

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 they were not in quest of…. Now do you understand serendipity?

It is charming to totter into vogue.

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun with nettles.

Prognostics do not always prove prophecies—at least the wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

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.

Our supreme governors, the mob.

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.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.