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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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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
Without
Valid
Would
Wing
Think
Formal
Thinking
Wings
Disputing
Holy
Ordination
Whether
Clergymen
Hands
Imposition
Two
Dove

More quotes by 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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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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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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Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
Horace Walpole
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Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Horace Walpole
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I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.
Horace Walpole
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Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
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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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 is charming to totter into vogue.
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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[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.
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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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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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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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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The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.
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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In science, mistakes always precede the truth
Horace Walpole