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
missing gains nonsense
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
political politics way
I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.
school power boys
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.
littles circumstances vulgar
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
hours found theme
I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
future greatness men
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.
dots ink misery
It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
ambition feet necks
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
methodists bigs subjects
The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
vices virtue lost
Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.
pain fear loneliness
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.
degenerates ancestor posterity
Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
silly discovery serendipity
Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.
book grace may
Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.