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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.
Horace Walpole
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Horace Walpole
Age: 79 †
Born: 1717
Born: September 24
Died: 1797
Died: March 2
Autobiographer
Novelist
Politician
Writer
London
England
Sir Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole
1st Baron Walpole
Horace Walpole
Earl of Orford
Onuphrio Muralto
Horatio Walpole
4th Earl of Orford
Horatio Walpole
Great
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Poetry
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Imitation
Situation
Passions
Passion
Operations
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Nature
Situations
Character
Tragedy
More quotes by Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
Horace Walpole
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Horace Walpole
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
I can forgive injuries, but never benefits.
Horace Walpole
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?
Horace Walpole
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses one misses more nonsense than sense.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.
Horace Walpole
I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.
Horace Walpole
The whole [Scotch] nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.
Horace Walpole
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Horace Walpole
I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole