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

More quotes by Horace Walpole

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It is charming to totter into vogue.
Horace Walpole
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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
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The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.
Horace Walpole
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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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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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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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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 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
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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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[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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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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It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
Horace Walpole
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We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one, fear of the dark to another, of physical pain to a third, of public ridicule to a fourth, of poverty to a fifth, of loneliness ... for all of us, our particular creature waits in ambush.
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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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
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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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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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Let the French but have England, and they won't want to conquer it.
Horace Walpole