Quotes from Horace Walpole

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.

Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one.

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.

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

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

Old friends are the great blessings of one's later years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have a memory of the same events, have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow -- To Be old friends?

The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is sort of a Divine accident.

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.

This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

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

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

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

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.

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.

But alas! my Lord, what is blood! what is nobility! We are all reptiles, miserable, sinful creatures. It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must return.

I can forget injuries, but never benefits.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

In science, mistakes always precede the truth.

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel – a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

A bystander often sees more of the game than those that play

Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.

There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.