Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Even
Poetry
Beauties
Comedy
Imitation
Situation
Passions
Passion
Operations
Half
Plot
Nature
Situations
Character
Tragedy
Great
Rules
Diversified

More quotes by Horace Walpole

Image
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.
Horace Walpole
Image
It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.
Horace Walpole
Image
Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.
Horace Walpole
Image
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
Image
The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
Horace Walpole
Image
I can forgive injuries, but never benefits.
Horace Walpole
Image
Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
Horace Walpole
Image
It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
Horace Walpole
Image
[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.
Horace Walpole
Image
In science, mistakes always precede the truth
Horace Walpole
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.
Horace Walpole
Image
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.
Horace Walpole
Image
I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.
Horace Walpole
Image
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.
Horace Walpole
Image
Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.
Horace Walpole
Image
Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.
Horace Walpole
Image
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
Image
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole