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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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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
Genius
Wilder
Age
Contemporaries
Less
Vulgar
Nature
Shakespeare
Stills
Civilized
Still
Faults
Might
Caught
Tutors
Would
Taste
Tutor

More quotes by Horace Walpole

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Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.
Horace Walpole
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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
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I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.
Horace Walpole
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Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!
Horace Walpole
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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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Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
Horace Walpole
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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.
Horace Walpole
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Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.
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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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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I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.
Horace Walpole
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Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.
Horace Walpole
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Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
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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How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
Horace Walpole
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Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
Horace Walpole
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I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.
Horace Walpole
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The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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.
Horace Walpole