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

More quotes by Horace Walpole

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The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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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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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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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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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In science, mistakes always precede the truth
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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It is charming to totter into vogue.
Horace Walpole
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Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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
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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
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I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.
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 easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
Horace Walpole
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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
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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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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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Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
Horace Walpole