Horace Walpole Quotes
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Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are.
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Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.
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Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
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This world is a comedy, not Life.
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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.
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I sit with my toes in a brook, And if any one axes forwhy? I hits them a rap with my crook, For 'tis sentiment does it, says I.
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My aversion to them...springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society-I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.
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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.
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The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, that they may not always plunder with impunity, but that there may be a retrospect; and it will show them that even bribes of diamonds to the Crown may not secure them from prosecution.
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Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!
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It is charming to totter into vogue.
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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!
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By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
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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.
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When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora's box. "What! all!" said the Prince. "Yes, all." "No," said the Prince; "curiosity must have been without.
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Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees.
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One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.
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It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
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The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.
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The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.
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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.
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Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
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A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not mis-become a monarch.
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I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
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[Corneille] was inspired by Roman authors and Roman spirit, Racine with delicacy by the polished court of Louis XIV.
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The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
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The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
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We must cultivate our garden. Furia to God one day in seven allots; The other six to scandal she devotes. Satan, by false devotion never flammed, Bets six to one, that Furia will be damned.
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Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged.
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To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know.
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