Horace Walpole Quotes - Page 4

A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not mis-become a monarch.

I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.

[French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity.

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!

The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, that they may not always plunder with impunity, but that there may be a retrospect; and it will show them that even bribes of diamonds to the Crown may not secure them from prosecution.

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?

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.

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!

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

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.

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.

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.

It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories

One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.

The whole [Scotch] nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.

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.

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.

The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.

Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.

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.

Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.

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.

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.