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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

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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
Tragedy
World
Solutions
Democritus
Comedy
Heraclitus
Often
Oftener
Feel
Wept
Feels
Laughed
Think
Solution
Thinking

More quotes by Horace Walpole

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[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.
Horace Walpole
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Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.
Horace Walpole
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It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
Horace Walpole
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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
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I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.
Horace Walpole
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Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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!
Horace Walpole
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Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.
Horace Walpole
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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!
Horace Walpole
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It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
Horace Walpole
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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
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It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.
Horace Walpole
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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.
Horace Walpole
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Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Horace Walpole
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If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary. The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner stone of our liberty.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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
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A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.
Horace Walpole
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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