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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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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
Humans
Discovery
Multitude
Nothing
Infinite
William
Way
Ignorance
Portion
World
Perhaps
Multitudes
Called
Portions
Used
Shown
Littleness
Ideas
Worlds
Milky
Human
Fully
Prodigious

More quotes by 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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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 Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
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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Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.
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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When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
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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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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[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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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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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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It is charming to totter into vogue.
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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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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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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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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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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Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
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