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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
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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
Upon
Paradox
Sense
Efforts
Look
Draw
Eccentricities
Looks
Draws
Paradoxes
Make
Capacity
Impotent
Good
Style
Eccentricity
Men
Effort
Noted
Attention
Celebrity
More quotes by Horace Walpole
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
Horace Walpole
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
Horace Walpole
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.
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
Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.
Horace Walpole
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
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
It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.
Horace Walpole
Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.
Horace Walpole
It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
Horace Walpole
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
Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
Horace Walpole
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
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
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
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?
Horace Walpole
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
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Horace Walpole
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.
Horace Walpole
Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.
Horace Walpole
