Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford— also known as Horace Walpole — was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth24 September 1717
age might taste
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.
pieces drs said
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.
women baths judgment
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.
women sometimes enough
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.
religion age mistress
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.
religion genius lines
That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.
writing doe ugly
I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.
money men hands
The contempt of money is no more a virtue than to wash one's hand is one; but one does not willingly shake hands with a man that never washes his.
writing ink cold
Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
doe modern curse
The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy.
men wife coward
I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.
vanity self impossible
It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.
writing laughing tragedy
Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.
missing gains nonsense
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.