Top 90 Horace Walpole Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

— Horace Walpole

2. “Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.”

— Horace Walpole

3. “The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”

— Horace Walpole

4. “I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel – a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.”

— Horace Walpole

5. “Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.”

— Horace Walpole

6. “In science, mistakes always precede the truth.”

— Horace Walpole

7. “Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.”

— Horace Walpole

8. “By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.”

— Horace Walpole

9. “Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories.”

— Horace Walpole

10. “Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.”

— Horace Walpole

11. “Our supreme governors, the mob.”

— Horace Walpole

12. “Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.”

— Horace Walpole

13. “Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.”

— Horace Walpole

14. “Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!”

— Horace Walpole

15. “This world is a comedy, not Life.”

— Horace Walpole

16. “History is a romance that is believed; romance, a history that is not believed.”

— Horace Walpole

Featured in: Romance Quotes

17. “Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”

— Horace Walpole

18. “When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.”

— Horace Walpole

19. “Old friends are the great blessings of one’s later years. Half a word conveys one’s meaning. They have a memory of the same events, have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow To Be old friends?”

— Horace Walpole

20. “I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one.”

— Horace Walpole

21. “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

22. “Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.”

— Horace Walpole

23. “A bystander often sees more of the game than those that play.”

— Horace Walpole

24. “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.”

— Horace Walpole

25. “Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.”

— Horace Walpole

26. “Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.”

— Horace Walpole

27. “The best philosophy is to do one’s duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one’s lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.”

— Horace Walpole

28. “Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I’d place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.”

— Horace Walpole

29. “The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.”

— Horace Walpole

30. “Heaven mocks the short-sighted views of man.”

— Horace Walpole

31. “I can forgive injuries, but never benefits.”

— Horace Walpole

32. “The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.”

— Horace Walpole

33. “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.”

— Horace Walpole

34. “Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees.”

— Horace Walpole

35. “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.”

— Horace Walpole

36. “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

37. “The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.”

— Horace Walpole

38. “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

39. “This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with regret.”

— Horace Walpole

40. “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.”

— Horace Walpole

41. “Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.”

— Horace Walpole

42. “I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.”

— Horace Walpole

43. “This life is but a pilgrimage.”

— Horace Walpole

44. “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

45. “Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.”

— Horace Walpole

46. “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

47. “The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy.”

— Horace Walpole

48. “I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one’s tongue don’t move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.”

— Horace Walpole

49. “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.”

— Horace Walpole

50. “Fashion is always silly, for, before it can spread far, it must be calculated for silly people; as examples of sense, wit, or ingenuity could be imitated only by a few.”

— Horace Walpole