Horace Walpole Quotes - Page 5

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.

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.

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

When the Prince of Wales [later King George IV] and the Duke of York went to visit their brother Prince William [later William IV]at Plymouth, and all three being very loose in their manners, and coarse in their language, Prince William said to his ship's crew, "now I hope you see that I am not the greatest blackguard of my family.

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.

Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees.

My aversion to them...springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society-I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.

We must cultivate our garden. Furia to God one day in seven allots; The other six to scandal she devotes. Satan, by false devotion never flammed, Bets six to one, that Furia will be damned.

[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.

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.

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.

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.