HORACE WALPOLE

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

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

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

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

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.

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

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.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

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.

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.

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

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

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

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

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.

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

… lame duck

I should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavily on the swords of the Americans.

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, in time a Vergil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru.