155 Quotes by Horace Walpole

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.

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

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

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.

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.

One’s mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.

Pictures may serve as helps to religion but are only an appendix to idolatry, for the people must be taught to believe in false gods and in the power of saints before they will learn to worship their images.