Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (English Intellectual, Politician)

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717–97,) originally Horatio Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, a man of letters, an antiquarian, and a Whig politician. He wrote The Castle of Otranto (1764,) one of the first Gothic novels in English and earliest literary horror stories.

Born in London, Horace was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first British prime minister. Horace was educated at Eton and King’s College-Cambridge. He then undertook the Grand Tour with the poet Thomas Gray.

Walpole returned to England in 1741 and became M.P. for Callington, Cornwall. He interested himself in cases like the John Byng trial of 1757. He exchanged his Cornish seat in 1754 for the family borough of Castle Rising, which he vacated in 1757 for the other family borough of King’s Lynn.

In 1747 Walpole purchased, near Twickenham, the former coachman’s cottage which he gradually ‘gothicized’ (1753–76) into the stuccoed and battlemented pseudo-castle of Strawberry Hill, which helped to reverse the fashion for classical and Italianate design. He also established a private press on which some of his own works, as well as Lucan’s Pharsalia and Gray’s Progress of Poesy and The Bard, were printed.

Walpole wrote essays and verses and is at his best in such satires as the Letter from Xo Ho to his Friend Lien Chi at Pekin (1757.) His Castle of Otranto (1764) set the fashion for supernatural romance.

Walpole’s literary fame rests principally upon his letters, which deal with party politics, foreign affairs, art, literature, and gossip in the most vibrant way. His firsthand accounts of such events as the Jacobite trials after the 1745 Rising and the Gordon Riots are invaluable.

Austin Dobson wrote Horace Walpole, A Memoir (1893.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford

The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Events, Prosperity, Success & Failure

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Feelings

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford

The gratitude of the world is but the expectation of future favors; its happiness, a hard heart and good digestion.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: World

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, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Ability, Potential, Greatness, Future

I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Happiness

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, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Generations

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Discovery

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Advice

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: World, Tragedy

A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford

Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Life, Life and Living

It is a special trick of low cunning to squeeze out knowledge from a modest man who is eminent in any science, and then to use it as legally acquired, and pass the source in total silence.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Plagiarism

Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford

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.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Fear

To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and 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, whatever it is; and despise affectation.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Acceptance, Common Sense, Happiness

There are three persons you should never deceive: your physician, your confessor, and your lawyer.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Deceit

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Choice, Man

In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Man, Charity

The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Topics: Gratitude

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