Quotes from Horace Walpole

I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one.

This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with regret.

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.

Heaven mocks the short-sighted views of man.

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.

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.

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?

It is sinful to cherish those whom heaven has doomed to destruction.

The most remarkable thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no people so obviously mad as the English.

This life is but a pilgrimage.

Nor have I forgotten sir. that the charity of his daughter delivered me from his power. I can forget injuries but never benefits.

and then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermit's cowl. "Angels of peace protect me!" cried Frederic, recoiling. "Deserve their protection!" said the spectre.

I hold visions to be wisdom, and would deny them only to ambition, which exists only by the destruction of visions of everybody else

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.

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.

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!

I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.

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.

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?