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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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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
Never
Would
Shun
Authors
Obliged
Company
Keep

More quotes by 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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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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Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.
Horace Walpole
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Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians.
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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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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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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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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Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.
Horace Walpole
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He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
Horace Walpole
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When Shakespeare copied chroniclers verbatim, it was because he knew they were good enough for his audiences. In a more polished age he who could so move our passions, could surely have performed the easier task of satisfying our taste.
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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Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.
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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Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
Horace Walpole
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Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.
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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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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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