Horace Walpole

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.

In science, mistakes always precede the truth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.

This world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.

The world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.

Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.

I am in a moment of pretty wellness.

The best philosophy is to do one's duties to take the world as it comes submit respectfully to one's lot and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it whatever it is.

Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years. ... They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.

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.